


Year 1: Slytherins and Sycophants

by Arinus



Series: Calista Snape [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Childhood Trauma, Complete, Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hogwarts First Year, Legilimency, Legilimens, Mentor Severus Snape, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Nightmares, Occlumency, Parent Bellatrix Black Lestrange, Parent Severus Snape, Parent-Child Relationship, Peer Pressure, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Severus Snape Has a Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-18
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-25 00:09:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 51,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14964881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arinus/pseuds/Arinus
Summary: Calista Snape has come a long way from the mute, wounded child left behind in the spoils of the First Wizarding War.She has survived an epic psychic battle with her sadistic mother, Bellatrix Lestrange with her mind intact. Thorny, moody, and reluctant to accept affection, she is more like her father, Severus Snape, than she quite realises, and against all odds, the two of them have managed to create something as close to a family as either of them has ever known.As Calista begins her first year at Hogwarts, she is nearly overwhelmed by Occlumency lessons, peer rivalry, and growing up Snape; but these struggles are only the beginning, and then the nightmares start, again...."She took advantage of a shared memory that made Calista particularly vulnerable," Severus said quietly, "An incident of… ritualistic abuse. I'm not certain how she managed to connect to Calista in the first place, but she was able to take control of her mind by forcing her to relive the memory over and over again in her dreams.""And you believe she may try the same tactic again?" Dumbledore asked."It worked once," Severus said baldly, "I would be surprised if she did not."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> AU, because of addition of Severus' OC daughter, but almost completely canon-compliant other than that.  
> All canon characters are in character, including a believable, but still canon-compliant, Severus-as-a-father/Mentor!Severus
> 
> TRIGGER WARNINGS:  
> Flashbacks/references to child abuse (physical/magical), dark magic rituals. PTSD. Necessary for plot, no more graphic descriptions than needed. There IS recovery/redemption.

August was determined to end with a fanfare. The sun beat down incessantly, so that walking outdoors felt rather like walking into a fireplace. Perhaps this was the reason that so many people paused to stare at the two figures that cut a path down the pavements of London, one tall and one quite small, but both wearing heavy black cloaks.

The taller of the two was a grown man probably somewhere close to thirty, and the smaller of the figures was a short, scrawny girl of perhaps ten or eleven years. This was nearly where the difference between them ended, for in addition to the heavy cloaks they wore, both sported straggly black hair, pasty complexions, and noses perhaps a tad too large for their respective faces.

"I don't understand why we can't simply Apparate to Diagon Alley," the younger of the pair whined, her breath coming fast as she tried to match the man's rapid pace.

Severus Snape glanced over his shoulder at the child, managing at once to communicate disapproval in his gaze, and to snag her hand in his own. He glanced around to see if anyone had been listening before issuing a warning to his daughter.

"Please," and the word was somehow more exasperated than polite, "Mind what you say in the middle of a crowded street. We're almost there anyhow."

"But it's  _hot_  outside, and my feet are sore. And the bus was full of smelly old Mug-"

Severus whirled around to face his daughter, and the glare he directed at her was sufficient to quiet her, at least for the moment.

During the final leg of their journey, Severus considered the irony of his current situation. Five years ago, when his daughter Calista had been placed into his custody, she had been a silent and deeply damaged child, rendered selectively mute and decidedly anguished by the torturous actions of her mother, Bellatrix Lestrange.

In those days, Severus had feared that she would never speak to him. Now, he was lucky if he could get her to shut up.

Not that he minded listening to Calista – not usually. But when he was in the middle of a street crowded with Muggles and she was blathering on about wizarding affairs, he found himself wishing that she would keep quiet once in awhile.

Presently, Severus halted in front of a very inconspicuous door, and ushered his daughter through it before entering himself. It was dark and shabby inside, but it was, thankfully, quite cool.

That proved to be the Severus' solitary reprieve though, for as soon as he and Calista were inside the Leaky Cauldron, the girl scowled up at him again.

"There aren't any Muggles around anymore, so now will you tell me why we had to walk all the way to Diagon Alley?"

They had actually taken a bus a good deal of the way, but that hardly seemed worth pointing out to the pouting, dark-haired child before him. He gripped her hand more tightly even as she made to pull it free, and led her to a small table with two chairs.

Only when he had surveyed the other occupants of the pub did he let go of Calista's hand, and he nodded towards one of the chairs and ordered ice water for both of them.

When they were both seated, Severus looked across the table, his expression remarkably mild.

"I've explained this to you, Calista. You're not going to be allowed to use magic outside of class, and you're going to have to learn how to coexist with Muggles. The sooner you are accustomed to this, the better."

The involuntary sneer that crossed his face as he uttered the word "Muggles" did little to underscore his point, however. It wasn't his fault; he'd hated being jostled and packed in on the bus just as much as she did.

Calista opened her mouth, likely with another sullen response, but their waters arrived and Severus was once again spared, as Calista drank half her water in once sip.

When they had both finished drinking, Severus chanced a glance at his daughter and remarked "No one told you to wear your winter cloak, you know."

Calista only huffed, but he did notice that, by the time they had reached the walled courtyard behind the pub, she had shed the cloak and carried it over her arm.

She was wearing faded purple corduroy trousers and a green-and-white striped top with bright red trainers, and if either of them noticed how ludicrous she looked, neither of them mentioned it.

Naturally, the first place that Severus guided Calista once they had entered Diagon Alley proper was the Apothecary. Calista didn't even bother to take out her school list; within moments Severus had found and purchased everything on it, as well as several other parcels for himself.

It was one of the perks of having the Hogwarts Potions Master for her father; another was that when they had crossed the narrow lane to the cauldron shop Calista was soon equipped with the sturdiest and highest-quality size 2 pewter cauldron that the shop stocked.

As he had anticipated, Calista took quite longer than necessary inside Flourish and Blott's. After an hour had passed, he was obliged to drag her bodily from the Magical Theory section of the bookshop.

When she had been younger, Calista had believed that she was a Squib, not realizing that her ability to keep her mother from reading her thoughts was actually a branch of magic called Occlumency.

She had been keenly interested in potions books as well as books concerning magical theory, in the hopes that she could find a branch of magic she didn't need inherent talent for, or perhaps a way to discover her own potential.

Although she had long since been convinced of her magical ability, her interest in both subjects had shown no sign of waning.

By the time Calista had been fitted for robes and equipped with all of her necessary school supplies, the daylight in Diagon Alley was fading, and when Calista begged to take the Floo Network home, he acquiesced.

**o-o-o-o**

The night before term started, Calista couldn't sleep at all.

She certainly wasn't the only first-year student of Hogwarts having trouble sleeping that night, but while other students tossed and turned in wakeful anticipation of the start of term, Calista was jolted awake for another reason entirely.

She had been having one of her nightmares again.

Calista sat at the head of her bed, in the small one-windowed room that had been hers ever since the beginning of the summer, when her father had thought it best that she spend some time away from Hogwarts until term started.

Until Severus had leased this flat at the beginning of the summer, Calista had lived with him in his professors' quarters at Hogwarts, with the Headmaster's permission. Now, however, that Calista was of school age herself, both the Headmaster and her father thought it best that she have a home outside of the castle.

Calista had never been to Spinner's End, and Severus had been determined to keep it that way for some time yet, so instead of taking her there, he had made arrangements to lease a flat in a nice neighbourhood in South London during the summers, so the two of them had a decent place to go home to.

Now, Calista was fiercely glad for the moonlight streaming through the window of her bedroom, a luxury she had never had while residing in the dungeons of Hogwarts Castle.

Of course, everyone has nightmares form time to time. Calista tried to tell herself this as she shivered in her bed, even though the night was warm.

At the foot of her bed she could see the outline of her new school trunk, all packed for tomorrow, and she focused on this tangible object while she willed herself not to call out for her father, with her voice or her mind.

She couldn't help but notice the crease of worry that appeared in his forehead whenever she told him she had had another nightmare, and besides she was eleven years old now and ashamed to be frightened by something as inconsequential as a dream.

Looking at the trunk caused a new fear to arise in Calista; what if she had a nightmare in her dormitory, and woke all the other girls up, and they all thought she was a dreadful baby?

Would her father take house points from them for teasing her? Would that embarrass her even more?

Calista scowled at her own thoughts, and lay resolutely down on her side again. She didn't care what anyone else at school thought of her anyway; they were all likely to be simpering fools, and she had far more important things to think about most of the time anyway. She had already decided that her tactic was going to be to hate all the other children first, before they could decide to hate her.

Calista closed her eyes, but the images from her most recent nightmare wouldn't stop assaulting her.

She had dreamed that she was walking through a hall of mirrors, and in each one of them she saw a reflection that was not her own – it was her mother's. She had been trying to run from her mother in the dream, but the mirrors had confused her and she hadn't known which way to go.

Eventually, her mother had caught up to her, had pointed her wand at her, and Calista had woken up in a cold sweat, imagining somehow that knives had flown from her mother's wand and stabbed her all over.

Calista sighed, opening her eyes and sitting up again. It was of no use, she wasn't going to get any sleep tonight, not after that dream. She slid off her bed and tiptoed over to the window instead, gazing out at the nearly-full moon.

Focusing on the bright, silvery light, she felt brave enough to allow herself to think about her mother.

Sometimes, Calista had a hard time remembering exactly what her mother looked like. It wasn't her mother's sharp, elegant cheekbones or piercing dark eyes that haunted her nightmares, but the coldness of her touch, the ferocity with which she hunted her enemies – even, sometimes, her friends.

She had spent the first four years of her life with Bellatrix, and vivid nightmares had kept most of the memories fresh. She supposed there might have been a good side to her mother, a time when she had shown some affection for her child, but if it was so, Calista could not remember it clearly.

She spent her waking hours firmly pushing everything she remembered about Bellatrix Lestrange into a hidden corner of her mind, but at night the door would fly open and there was nothing Calista could do to stop it.

It was as if, somehow, Bellatrix was trying to get in again. Calista shivered again.

Earlier that same year, Bellatrix had found a way to lodge her own presence inside her daughter's mind, even though Bellatrix could not reach her physically. Her father had told her that she was locked in Azkaban, but this did little to reassure Calista on nights like these, especially in light of what she'd already managed to accomplish, once, from there.

Calista had believed herself to be very strong, but she had not been able to withstand the force of Bellatrix's attack on her mind, and it had been Severus who had employed highly dangerous and likely illegal methods of Legilimency to rescue her.

She wondered now if Bellatrix was trying to reach her again somehow, but when she reflected, she didn't feel any different, except that she was frightened.

Before, when Bellatrix had attacked her mind, Calista had begun to feel that something was wrong long before she knew exactly what it was.

It had been rather like being in one of her nightmares, and waking up only to find that she wasn't dreaming after all, was in fact only in a different version of the same horrific dream.

But this was not what Calista felt now, and she was relieved even though the fear of her nightmare was still acute.

Calista finally abandoned her post at the window to ease open the lid of her school trunk and withdraw the first of her textbooks that her hand happened upon.

She slipped it out quickly and then snapped the lid closed, as if she was afraid that something inside the trunk would bite her hand.

That was the thing about nightmares; they made you afraid of  _everything_ , at least until the sun was shining again.

Calista curled up in the corner of her room, where the moonlight was strongest, and read  _The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 1_ until the sun was up.

**o-o-o-o**

Severus looked down at Calista, while a porter loaded her school trunk onto the scarlet train behind them. He placed his hand on her shoulder and smiled awkwardly.

"Well," he said, "I presume you can manage from here? I won't embarrass you by taking the Hogwarts Express with you, but I'll see you at school tonight."

Calista met his gaze and nodded. She poked the toe of one of her trainers at the ground, glancing back at the train with mild trepidation. When she looked back, her father was already disappearing through the barrier between platforms 9 and 10.

Calista sighed, and headed towards the nearest door on the train. They had arrived fairly early to the station, so there were still a few empty compartments when she boarded, and Calista chose one of these at random, flinging herself onto a seat and opening the cover of  _The Standard Book of Spells_  again.

She had forgotten to put the book back in her school trunk until they were preparing to leave for the station, and she didn't want her father to notice and ask why she had taken it out in the first place, so she had simply tucked it into her robes.

She found she was glad for the distraction when the train began to fill up, and two other students joined her in the compartment.

One was short, with brown hair and the other was very thin and red-headed. Both were boys that looked to be about her age. Calista gathered from their conversation that they had just met on the platform, but beyond ascertaining this, she returned resolutely to studying her book.

The two continued to chat to each other, and as the train pulled away, Calista realised that the red-haired one was trying to get her attention. She set her book in her lap, keeping her index finger on the page she was reading.

"Er, what?" she asked, shaking her head slightly. She hadn't heard what he'd said.

"I said, 'Are you a first year as well?' Oliver and I are." He gestured to his new friend, and Calista reflected briefly before answering. She wasn't sure if she liked this boy; something in his tone of voice, confident and almost overly friendly, irked her. But then, nearly everything that was new irked her.

Calista nodded, indicating that she was a first-year as well. She picked up her book and opened it again, but the boy wasn't finished speaking to her.

"It's a pleasure to meet you," he said, in the same too-eager and too-polite voice, "My name is Percy. Percy Weasley."

She looked at him for a moment, and then said, in rather a flat voice, "I'm Calista."

"Kind of a strange name, isn't it?" the other, brown-haired boy asked, "But then again, so's Percy, eh? Anyway, I'm Oliver Wood. Think you'll go out for Quidditch?"

"No," Calista said, picking up her book again with determination. She couldn't quite hide a slight scowl. Her name was unusual, so what? It wasn't  _that_ strange.

Percy spoke up again.

" _I_  won't be wasting my time with Quidditch. Flying around on broomsticks is fine for a hobby, I suppose, but I have far more serious ambitions for my time at Hogwarts. I expect to be made a Prefect in my fifth year, of course, and I aim for Head Boy, but I shan't get too sure of myself just yet. Are you hoping to be a Prefect too, Calista?"

She tilted her head, eyeing Percy over the top of her book. It hadn't even occurred to her, actually. She agreed with him about the Quidditch bit, at least.

"Maybe," she said hesitantly. She felt uncomfortable talking to the two boys, because she was afraid she'd accidentally say something stupid and they'd begin to tease her.

Calista hated feeling inferior, so she decided in that instant that she didn't like either of the two boys, and didn't really care what they thought.

It was much easier to stop caring what she said or did once she had decided not to like either of them. While Percy kept blathering on about his ambitions, and Oliver interjected now and then with Quidditch trivia, Calista ignored them both and focused on her book.

She had gotten through nearly an entire chapter when she felt Percy staring at her again. She tried to ignore it, but both boys had grown quiet, so she lowered the book again, and looked at them.

"What?" she asked, a touch of irritation in her voice.

"What House are you hoping for?" Oliver asked in a tone that suggested it wasn't the first time he'd asked her.

"Oh," she said intelligently, "Um."

" _I'm_  hoping for Gryffindor. It's a family tradition. My parents were in it, and both my older brothers are as well," Percy said proudly, "Although I suppose Ravenclaw wouldn't be terrible. You must be going for Ravenclaw yourself, the way you've already got your nose buried in a textbook."

"Actually," Calista said, "I'm hoping for Slytherin." She wasn't even certain if it was true; she just wanted to be contrary.

She picked up her book and hid her face in it, a clear indication that she didn't want to be bothered anymore.

Neither of the boys spoke to her again for the duration of the train ride.

**o-o-o-o**

Calista wasn't actually certain which House she wanted to be sorted into. As she stood in the Entrance Hall with the rest of the first years, she contemplated. She looked around at the other students, trying to guess which House they'd be sorted into.

She knew a fair amount about each House, having lived at Hogwarts for four years or so, but she hadn't really given much thought to which one she'd prefer to be a part of.

If she hadn't already gathered from her father's attitude that Gryffindor would be the worst one to be sorted into, sharing a train compartment with Gryffindor-hopeful Percy Weasley had illustrated the point.

Calista had thought him tiresome and insufferable (and conveniently, she forgot that her father sometimes called her both of those things), and besides, her father had told her that members of that House had a reputation for being quite bone-headed.

He had said more than once that the only reason their reputation tended towards the brave was because they were a lot of fools, rushing headfirst into any and every situation, rather than actually thinking things through.

Calista knew her father had been in Slytherin, but she knew her mother had been as well, so she wasn't certain how she felt about it. Perhaps Ravenclaw  _would_  be best.

She didn't have any time left to wonder though, because the students were being led into the Great Hall by a woman Calista had seen in Hogwarts, but could not recall the name of. She thought she was Head of Gryffindor House.

The students had been lined up in alphabetical order for the Sorting, and Calista was quite small for her age, so even standing on tiptoe she couldn't really make out the Sorting Hat. She knew what the Sorting Ceremony was like, knew what she was supposed to do, but she was still curious to get a glimpse of the hat.

Even though she couldn't actually see the hat, she could definitely hear it.

Her father hadn't mentioned the Hat was going to  _sing_ , and yet sing it did, belting out a clever little song that echoed throughout the Great Hall.

" _You might not expect too much from me,_

_Just an ancient, floppy hat,_

_But if you put me on, you'll see,_

_I'm so much more than that!_

_The four founders of Hogwarts knew,_

_They could not live forever,_

_So each one placed his point of view,_

_In a hat that tells you whether:_

_You'll belong in Gryffindor,_

_With the bravest of the brave,_

_The knights in shining armour,_

_Fighting with sword and stave!_

_You'll belong in Hufflepuff,_

_With that kind and loyal band,_

_Even when the seas get rough,_

_There will always be a hand!_

_You'll belong in Ravenclaw,_

_With the cleverest of minds,_

_Where those who are enlightened are,_

_Most prized and treasured finds!_

_You'll belong in Slytherin,_

_Where ambition is most prized,_

_They're clever and conniving,_

_And will do anything to rise!_

The students broke into applause, and Calista considered her prospects. Ravenclaw and Slytherin had both been described as having "clever" students, so she rather hoped she was sorted into one of the two.

Gryffindors were unbearable, of course, and it sounded as though Hufflepuffs were a bunch of feeble-minded pushovers.

Even as Calista was mulling this over, the professor unrolled a long sheet of parchment, and called off the first student to be sorted:

"Avril, Olivia!"

Calista had a glimpse of a girl with a long blonde ponytail darting towards the stool, and then the hat shouted:

" _SLYTHERIN!"_

"Baggins, John,"

" _HUFFLEPUFF!"_

"Banks, Lucinda,"

" _RAVENCLAW!"_

The hat went on and on, and Calista gradually drew closer to the head of the line. She shivered a little as the professor called the first 'S' name, knowing it was almost her turn.

She was close enough now to the front of the room to have a good view of the staff table. She looked along it and spotted her father, who was watching the Sorting. She saw him clap as a boy named Lucas Sawyer became a Slytherin.

Severus must have felt her gaze, or perhaps he knew her name was next, for he caught her eye and offered a small, very nearly imperceptible smile. Calista knew it to be one of encouragement, and felt a tiny bit better.

"Snape, Calista!"

Calista was dimly aware of a flurry of whispers, and even a catcall from the Gryffindor table, as she approached the stool with the hat. She froze, half lifting her arm. Was she supposed to take the hat herself and put it on, or would the professor do it for her?

The professor, who Calista just now remembered was called McGonagall, nodded slightly, indicating that Calista should sit. Feeling her face heat up, she obeyed, and McGonagall settled the hat on her head.

" _Ah, what have we here?"_

Calista almost jumped at the little voice in her ear. She had known the hat could talk, but she was still on edge.

 _Anything but Gryffindor_ , she silently willed, wondering if the hat would pick up on it.

Apparently the hat understood, for it chuckled softly.

" _Anything, eh? Well let's see what we've got here. Plenty of courage, you know, you wouldn't go completely wrong if you reconsidered your opinion of Gryffindor…"_

 _No,_  Calista thought desperately, imagining her father's disappointment. Besides, what was the hat on about? She was afraid of everything, she just pretended not to be.

" _Clever, too. As I see it, we have three viable options. However, if you're certain Gryffindor is out, I'll have to recommend..._

_SLYTHERIN!"_

This last word was shouted so everyone could hear, and there was a sudden rush of noise as the hat was lifted off Calista's head.

She caught her father's eye again, and his smile was now wide enough to be considered gloating. She smiled weakly back, and walked quickly to the Slytherin table.

Never before in her life had Calista been greeted so warmly by her peers as when she sat down at the Slytherin table for the first time.

Several students patted her on the back, and nearly all of them smiled or waved or both.

"Is it true Professor Snape's your dad?" a third-year boy asked, and Calista nodded.

"Wow," remarked the girl next to her. Calista recognised her as being Olivia Avril, who had been the first student sorted that evening, "Your father is a professor? You're lucky, you'll get top marks."

Calista lifted her chin slightly.

"Potions is my best subject," she said, not at all humbly, "I would get top marks regardless of the professor."

Oliva chuckled. "Whatever you say," she said, shrugging, and Calista was prepared to dislike her too.

Just as she was deciding this, Olivia poked Calista in the ribs and pointed to the sorting hat. Percy Weasley, the boy from the train, was approaching, his nose high in the air.

"Bet you ten galleons that git is sorted into  _Gryffindor_ ," Olivia said snidely, "Someone told me both his brothers are in it."

Calista looked at Olivia again, and recanted her initial assessment. Perhaps she wasn't so terrible, after all.

"Do I look like I'm going to take a losing bet?" Calista retorted, " _I_  didn't get sorted into Gryffindor, after all. I'm not daft."

Olivia grinned.

The sorting had screamed " _GRYFFINDOR!"_

"Told you so," Olivia whispered.

Calista smiled slightly. Perhaps this wouldn't be so difficult after all.


	2. Chapter 2

Calista slept soundly her first night at Hogwarts. It was as if the previous night of anguish had never happened, and in light of her initial acceptance by fellow Slytherins, she even dared to hope her nightmares would be over for good.

In fact, she slept so soundly that she very nearly overslept. She would have, were it not for the excited chatter of the other girls in her dormitory.

There were four girls in the first-year Slytherin dormitories that year: Olivia Avril, whom Calista had been friendly with the night before; Portia MacNair, a solid-looking girl with a constantly runny nose; Emily Yaxley, who was very tall and willowy and so far had struck Calista as quite shy; and of course, Calista herself.

Calista scrambled out of bed, not bothering to make the covers up again, and hurried into her robes. The other girls were nearly all ready, and she didn't want to be left behind. She ran a comb half-heartedly through her hair, loosening a few tangles but doing almost nothing about its straggly appearance.

"We have Herbology first thing today," Portia MacNair said, rubbing her nose with the back of her hand and sniffing hard, "I don't see why we have to go outside so early."

Calista allowed a fairly wide berth between herself and Portia as the four girls began their trek to the Great Hall for breakfast. She wasn't sure if Portia was ill or allergic, but either way Calista wasn't overly fond of bogies, and she'd seemed the dullest of the lot besides.

Severus wasn't at the staff table in the Great Hall. He had always taken breakfast in his quarters, but Calista had wondered before if this was simply for her sake. Since he was not here now, she supposed that meant he had always done so, even before she had gone to live with him.

Five minutes into breakfast, Calista found herself wishing that that she was still able to take breakfast with her father in his quarters, away from the rest of the students.

Her fellow Slytherins found her very interesting, because her father was a professor. She had assumed that the children of other professors would be attending Hogwarts as well, but judging by the attention she received, she was the only one.

She didn't know if this was because none of the other professors had children, or if their children went to another school.

"So if Snape's your dad," a beefy second-year boy said thickly through a mouthful of breakfast meats, "You must've been to Hogwarts before, right?"

Calista swallowed a mouthful of porridge and nodded, wincing at the bits of meat that were still stuck in the boy's teeth.

"Yes," she said, "But only in the dungeons, mostly."

"Wicked," the boy continued, spearing another sausage with his fork, "Then you must know where all the secret passages are."

"Um," Calista began, but then Olivia rolled her eyes and interrupted.

"She just told you she's only been in the dungeons before," she snapped.

Calista concentrated very hard on her porridge so she wouldn't laugh.

After breakfast, the Slytherin first-years trudged en masse to the Greenhouses. Luckily, it was still warm outside, and Calista rather liked the feel of being outside in the morning.

Herbology was a double lesson with the Ravenclaws, who were already at the Greenhouses when Calista and the other Slytherins arrived.

"Come along, come along," a dumpy middle-aged witch called, "You don't want to be late to your first lesson."

Someone muttered under their breath, but Calista couldn't tell who it was, or what they'd said.

"I'm Professor Sprout," she announced, "And this is Herbology. In your first year, we will be discussing proper techniques for growing and harvesting plants in general. We will learn the properties and uses of many commonly-used plants. Our first unit is on the basics of good gardening practice. Open your books, please."

The lesson seemed to go on for hours, and it was not very interesting to Calista, who thought she already knew most of what was covered in the first lesson simply because of the crossover material between Potions and Herbology.

She flipped through her book, looking ahead to see if they would get to anything interesting soon.

"Miss Snape! We are on page seven." Professor Sprout reprimanded her, and Calista turned back to the beginning of the book with an exaggerated riffling of pages.

Confined to the spread of pages six and seven, Calista nearly sighed with boredom, reading and re-reading the information on the pages, almost none of which was interesting at all.

Professor Sprout was still droning on about soil acidity, something Calista didn't care about. Wasn't that what Apothecaries were for? So you could obtain ingredients that were already prepared for potions making, and not have to muck around in the dirt forever?

"Miss Snape?" Calista started, realizing belatedly that Professor Sprout had asked her a question.

"Would you care to tell the class the proper time of year to plant Bubotubers?"

"Er," Calista fumbled, not certain if it was something she had ever heard of. Why hadn't she read the Herbology book on the train? "Uhm, September?"

Several of the Ravenclaw students sniggered, and several more shot their hands into the air. Professor Sprout called on one of them.

"Yes, Miss Clearwater?"

"The proper time to plant a Bubotuber plant is in late April," a girl with long curly hair answered, "September is when the mature plant should be  _harvested_."

She spoke in a way that clearly insinuated Calista was daft not to have realised the difference. Calista scowled at the girl, who smirked back.

Professor Sprout assigned them all ten inches on soil acidity and planting seasons, and as Calista was closing her book and putting her quill away, she clearly heard one of the Ravenclaw girls as she strode by.

"I swear, the Slytherin students become thicker every year."

Calista sneered at the girl. It wasn't the one who had answered the question, but a stout, red-faced girl with bushy brown hair. She tried to think of a clever retort, but none came to mind, so instead she marched past the girl, catching up to Olivia and the others.

**o-o-o-o**

The second lesson that day was Charms. Professor Flitwick was a tiny little man with a very high voice. Several of the Slytherins sniggered when he had to climb up on top of a stack of books to begin his lecture.

"Hello, hello. Welcome to Charms class. Today I will go over the course syllabus, and we will discuss the qualities that separate a Charm from a Transfiguration Spell."

He used his wand to send a copy of the course syllabus flying to each student in the room. Calista's landed squarely in front of her, and she scanned the parchment, feeling disappointed for the second time that day.

It looked as though Charms class was going to be a bunch of happy, useless rubbish. Tickling Charm? Scouring Charm? Were they going to be learning anything useful in this course?

At the end of the lecture, Professor Flitwick asked if there were any questions. Calista put her hand up.

"Yes, Miss Snape?" He seemed delighted to have a question to answer.

"I was just wondering. If I'm ever attacked by a vampire, should I use a Tickling Charm, or a Colour-Change Charm to defeat him?"

Several of the other students jeered at this, and Calista smirked.

Professor Flitwick, however, didn't seem to be amused.

"Five points from Slytherin for impertinence," he said, "And you all seem to agree with Miss Snape that first-year lessons are beyond you, I'd like the entire class to write fifteen inches on the Silencing Charm which I'm sure you all know is a piece of fifth-year magic."

**o-o-o-o**

At lunch time, Calista was sullen and withdrawn. Fifteen inches of parchment and five points for one little comment?

Olivia seemed to sense the source of her troubles, for she leaned her head down and murmured to Calista.

"Marcus Flint says Flitwick and Snape don't get along. He reckons Flitwick came down hard on you because of your dad."

Calista shrugged, not feeling like being consoled. She wondered if it was true that her father didn't get along with the other professors. Certainly she had never known him to be particularly friendly to any of them.

She pulled her class schedule from her bag and looked at it carefully. She was scheduled for Astronomy this afternoon, and then she had to find time to write at least two papers so far.

She scanned the schedule for Potions, and saw that she didn't have it until Friday, but that it was a double session with the Gryffindors. She groaned aloud and put her schedule away.

It was going to be a long week, and she expected that having to share Potions class with the Gryffindors would dull the one bright spot in her class schedule.

**o-o-o-o**

As it turned out, Potions wasn't the only class that caught Calista's interest. She surprised herself with her interest in Transfiguration, a class taught by the Head of Gryffindor House, Professor McGonagall.

The class was challenging for her, because she didn't have much practical experience with actual wandwork; still, she understood the theory, and most of her errors seemed to come from over-thinking things.

In their first lesson, they had been instructed to change matches into needles. Calista had concentrated so deeply on the transformation of the wood into metal that she had wound up with a stainless-steel match.

It was utterly useless both for lighting fires and for sewing, but Professor McGonagall had mentioned that changing the properties of an object without completely transfiguring it into something else was actually quite tricky and nuanced.

She had not been sufficiently impressed with Calista to give her a pass on the assignment, however, and added to her mounting pile of homework Calista now had to find time to practise the spell. McGonagall had supplied her with an entire book of matches to experiment on.

Calista couldn't stand her History of Magic class, but luckily no one else could either, and old Professor Binns didn't seem to notice that no one in class was paying any attention.

Most of what the first-year Slytherins were doing, in fact, was circulating crude drawings of Professor Binns. In such drawings, he was depicted lecturing in the middle of a fierce duel, in the middle of a goblin war, or in other such circumstances.

The consensus was that Binns would keep on lecturing, oblivious to anything from the end-of-class signal to all-out war. Indeed, he had kept on lecturing through his own death, and now hovered in front of the classroom as a ghost.

The first Astronomy lesson had taken place on Monday afternoon, but Professor Sinistra had revealed that the rest of their lessons would take place at midnight. It didn't' seem to bother her in the least that the students were scheduled for Tranfiguration at 9:00 AM the following morning.

**o-o-o-o**

Calista wrote twenty inches on the Silencing Charm, a task that proved extremely difficult, since there wasn't really very much to write about beyond the way the wand was meant to be held, and the way  _Silencio_  was meant to be intoned, all of which took up perhaps three inches of parchment.

Calista had then gone on to highlight spells in the same family of wrist movement, as well as delving into the theory of  _why_  the spell was constructed in the way it was.

Burrowing deep into Adalbert Waffling's  _Magical Theory_ , Calista discovered that the modern Silencing Charm was the result of many failed or faulty incarnations.

The spell had originated as a ritualistic one in ancient Egypt, before the advent of wands, and had actually required that a drop of Banshee blood be placed on the lips of the person the spell was being cast on.

Calista found this puzzling, since Banshees were known for their piercing shrieks rather than their silences, so she had delved deeper into the history of the ritual, and discovered that at the time, people had believed that Banshees got their powerful voices by stealing voices from others. Thus, the blood was intended to rob the person of their voice.

Calista went on to describe how a witch named Casseiopia had conducted several experiments and deduced that the actual silencing effect of the ritual was caused by the dance performed around the victim, not the blood itself.

In later years, when magic wands became the tool of choice, the movements had been adapted to a simple waving of the wand instead of a dance.

In the end, Calista's paper was five inches longer than Flitwick had asked for. She had intended the length of her paper to be taken as a challenge, to show Flitwick that she didn't care one bit that he'd assigned her extra homework for her comment, but her plan backfired.

On the contrary, Professor Flitwick was deeply impressed by Calista's extensive research, and she became, without quite wanting to, one of his favourite students. From that point on, he tended to overlook her snide comments, or would redirect them by asking her another question.

When she asked him, on the third day of class, if the Bubble-Head Charm was an allusion to the Gryffindors' lack of ability to master it, he asked her, quite seriously, if she believed that the qualities of each student that determined their House placement would also indicate their strengths and weaknesses in certain subjects.

When she answered snidely that she didn't think Gryffindors had any strengths, since sword-fighting was no longer offered at Hogwarts, he had assigned her another essay, on the qualities that had led several witches and wizards throughout history to invent new Charms.

After the first essay on the Silencing Charm, Flitwick only assigned the extra essays to Calista, but he also awarded her extra-credit points for completing them. By the end of class on Thursday, she had earned back the five points he'd taken from Slytherin as well as an additional ten.

**o-o-o-o**

Calista had wondered what it would be like to be in her father's Potions class. Of course, she had been taught plenty about potion-making by him before starting school, but never in a classroom full of other students.

Severus did glance at her when she walked into the dungeon classroom, but he didn't make a point of recognizing her in front of the rest of her classmates, which was frankly a bit of a relief to Calista, who was tired of fielding questions about being related to the Potions Master.

Calista set up her cauldron in the middle of the classroom, between Olivia Avril and Emily Yaxley. She deliberately sat away from Portia MacNair, because she didn't want the other girls' bogies dripping into her own cauldron.

No matter. Portia seemed perfectly content to sit with the Slytherin boys. Calista reflected meanly that she fit in beside them, being nearly as broad-shouldered and beefy-looking as most of the boys.

Just as the warning bell was ringing for the start of class, the Gryffindors began to stream into the classroom. Percy Weasley was first to arrive, and then two girls Calista didn't know by name. Oliver Wood was last, coming in behind three other students and decidedly after the bell.

"You are late," Professor Snape intoned, radiating disapproval. "Three points from Gryffindor. That's one from each of you that arrived after the bell rang."

"What?!" Oliver Wood sounded outraged, "Come off it, we were barely late, and we had to come all the way from Gryffindor Tower!"

The professor fixed his glare on Wood; Calista could have told him that it would be a very bad idea to continue the argument, when her father's face looked like it did now.

"All of the other students managed to be on time to class. I, for one, will not make allowances."

"Well of course the Slytherins arrived on time," Percy Weasley spoke up, "Their common room is in the Dungeons, sir. But we had to traverse the entire castle to get here; surely you can see the trouble we have, and forgive us this minor trespass."

Calista had to bite the inside of her mouth to keep from laughing out loud. Weasley was making a very big mistake.

Professor Snape's mouth twitched, and he swept across the room to speak directly to Percy.

"You are just as impertinent as your brothers are, Mr. Weasley. A further point from Gryffindor, and I expect you to draw a map by the beginning of next week's lesson and hand it in to me. The map shall illustrate the shortest path from Gryffindor Tower to my classroom, and then you will no longer have an excuse to be late."

Percy lowered his face to his cauldron and set up his ingredients in silence. Olivia caught Calista's eye and smirked.

Severus returned to the centre of the classroom, and began his lecture.

"The art of Potion-Making is perhaps the most finessed art at Hogwarts. Few of you will appreciate the beauty of a simmering cauldron, the elegance of its shimmering fumes.

Even fewer of you will learn to appreciate the subtle differences from one infusion to the next that can be the difference between pain and pleasure, between life and death."

Here, he glanced around the room, his gaze resting briefly on Oliver Wood and on Calista, for very opposite reasons.

"For those select few of you that show promise, I can teach you to brew fame, to bottle glory – even, to put a stopper in death."

Calista was entranced; of course, she had heard him say similar things before, but to be reminded, here in the classroom where she would learn it all, just how powerful and elegant of an art it was – it thrilled her, even more than Transfiguration class had.

"In each and every class session, we will brew a potion.," Severus continued, "If you cannot complete these assignments to satisfaction, then I can do no more than wish you luck on the end-of-term exams, but I doubt that will do you any good. I expect, of course, that you will remain after class to work on assignments that are not perfected during class time."

Severus resumed the lecture by asking the class if they knew what a bezoar was. When Percy Weasley's hand shot into the air, Severus glanced at Calista before calling on Percy. Percy's cheeks reddened as he answered, evidently attempting to put himself in the professor's favour after his earlier outburst.

"A bezoar is a stone from the stomach of a goat. It, er, is used in antidotes," Percy looked satisfied with his answer.

"Is that all?" Severus asked, before he returned his gaze to the side of the room where all the Slytherins were sitting.

"Calista, would you kindly fill Mr. Weasley in on a few details?"

Calista noted that he hadn't called her 'Miss Snape', and was glad. It would have seemed far more awkward, somehow, than simply being the only student in the class that he referred to by first name.

"A bezoar is actually a hairball, hardened to resemble a stone," she said clearly, unable to keep a slight smirk off her own face as she watched Percy's redden, "It can form in the stomach of almost any mammal, though it is only when found in a goat is it useful in potion-making. It is used in many antidotes, but can also be an antidote quite by itself, in many circumstances, though it's cost prohibitive to use it alone, since they're expensive."

"A point for Slytherin," he said, and Calista could swear she saw her father smirk a little in Percy's direction as well, before he nodded and continued the lecture.

Wood interjected, "Percy got the answer first."

Severus' response was icy: "I do not award credit for partial or incomplete answers," he said.

Professor Snape assigned them a boil-cure potion to work on for their first potion, and Calista almost laughed. She had made the very same potion countless times, and could nearly mix it in her sleep.

Her ingredients were simmering long before anyone else's had made it into their cauldrons. As Calista gently stirred her mixture, she glanced around the classroom.

Several students were still squinting at the page in their books, although a few had begun to prepare their ingredients. Across the room, Percy was crushing snake fangs, and beside her, Emily Yaxley was stewing her horned slugs.

Calista looked to her right, and saw that Olivia's cauldron was just now being put to simmer as well. She saw Olivia pick up the porcupine quills, preparing to dump them into the cauldron…

"No!", Calista hissed, reaching out to stop Olivia from putting the quills in. The quills spilled all over the tabletop and the floor, but none of them landed in the cauldron, luckily.

"Calista, what-" Olivia began, but Calista glanced up to see if her father was watching. She probably wasn't supposed to help other students.

Snape was occupied however, reprimanding Colleen Collins for not crushing her snake fangs into a fine enough powder, and Calista leaned over to whisper to Olivia.

"Don't put the porcupine quills in until  _after_  you take the cauldron off the fire, or—"

Just then, there was an explosion and an awful hissing noise from across the room. Wood's cauldron was issuing angry clouds of green smoke, and the other Gryffindors were dodging the sprays flying form the cauldron and burning their shoes.

"Or that happens," Calista remarked, perversely glad that it was a Gryffindor who had made the mistake, instead of Olivia.

Wood was given a detention during which to practise brewing the potion properly, and Calista was awarded top marks for the assignment. No one was particularly surprised by either development.

Emily Yaxley had done quite a good job on her potion too, so she was awarded a passing grade along with Calista. Severus rather looked as though he suspected Calista of helping Emily, but she truly hadn't.

When Severus pronounced Olivia's potion to be more than acceptable as well, Calista concentrated on blocking off her mind. Severus apparently found it slightly suspicious that both students seated next to his daughter had done the best, next to Calista herself, on the assignment.

After class, Calista had intended to stay behind and talk to her father about her first week of lessons, but Wood was still cleaning up his potion, and Olivia wanted Calista and the rest of the Slytherins to go down to the Quidditch pitch and watch tryouts for the Slytherin team.

Calista wasn't terribly interested in Quidditch, but now that she had found some level of acceptance among some of her peers, she rather enjoyed it, and decided to go along with the rest of them.

**o-o-o-o**

"Marcus Flint's going out for Chaser, I heard," Olivia chatted as they made their way to the Quidditch pitch, after a brief stop at the dormitory to put their school things away. They had Friday afternoons completely free, remarkably.

"Oh," Calista said, "Which one is he?"

"He's just a year ahead of us," Portia piped up. She paused to sniffle before she added, "They don't often let second-years onto the team."

"He's the thick one who asked if you knew where all the secret passages were," Olivia clarified, "I hope he's better at Quidditch than he is at deductive reasoning."

Calista was surprised into laughter at Olivia's observation, because she had been thinking rather the same thing herself.

"Why's he in Slytherin, anyway?" Calista ventured, "Aren't you supposed to be clever to be in this House?"

"Clever or ambitious," Olivia answered, "Marcus reckons he's going to play for a professional Quidditch team. He told me all about it at dinner the other night."

"I'm surprised that Weasley boy didn't get sorted into Slytherin then," Calista said, "He told me on the train that he wants to be Head Boy."

Olivia and Portia sniggered. "That'll happen as soon as Gryffindor wins the House Cup," Portia supplied sarcastically.

"I don't really know exactly how the sorting hat chooses," Olivia admitted, "I asked Marcus, but, well." She shrugged, indicating how useful of an endeavour that had been.

"Still, he's a pureblood, and that's got to count for something."

"Yeah," Calista echoed, feeling strangely hollow.

She wasn't completely pure-blooded; Bellatrix had alluded to it more than once, although at the time, she hadn't been clear on what Bellatrix meant. That was before she knew her father, and she'd only assumed vaguely that Bellatrix's late husband must have been him.

Severus almost never talked about his family beyond Calista herself, but she had gathered that his father was a Muggle. She had gathered as well that Severus loathed his father.

Now Calista had to wonder: Was it simply  _because_  he was a Muggle that Severus had loathed him?

Would her housemates think less of her if they realised she was not a pureblood? In that instant, Calista resolved they would never find out.

"It has definitely got to count for something," Calista echoed, following her classmates to the Quidditch pitch.


	3. Chapter 3

Severus decided to actually take breakfast in the Great Hall on the first Saturday after term had begun. Since Calista had come to live with him five years ago, he had rarely gone so long without spending time with her, and he found that he missed her company.

Paternal affection did not come naturally to Severus, but he tried. It went a long way that he could see so much of himself in Calista, in her prickly self-defensive attitude and strike-first mentality.

Watching Calista begin at Hogwarts brought back a lot of his own memories, some fond, but most painful.

He remembered his excitement, but also remembered that in was in large part due to the simple fact that he'd be away from home. In those days, if he could have lived at Hogwarts year-round, he would have.

How ironic, then, that he had spent most of Calista's childhood doing just that, simply because he didn't want to bring her to Spinner's End any more than he had actually wanted to be there.

Despite his overall opinion of the place though, he hadn't sold it. He was not fool enough to think that the rest of the Dark Lord's puppets were locked away for good, that the Dark Lord would never come back. He certainly hoped it to be the case, but he knew better.

If and when his old colleagues began to seek him out, he wanted them to return to his old place instead of seeking him out at Hogwarts or in the flat he'd leased over the summer. In short, he wanted to keep them away from Calista.

Severus drifted from his musings about real estate, and returned to watching the double doors of the Great Hall. Soon enough, a little platoon of green-trimmed robes came through the doors, and he spotted Calista among them.

Most of the students wore Muggle clothes on weekends, but it was fairly typical of the Slytherins to wear their robes all the time, particularly the younger ones.

It was a subtle sign that they would never embrace Muggle culture, although it was really a stupid sign, because a good deal of them were wearing Muggle clothes beneath their robes anyway. If he recalled his own time at Hogwarts correctly, some students would outgrow the habit, and some wouldn't.

Calista was with the other first-year Slytherin girls and two of the boys. As she entered the Great Hall, she was listening to something a blonde girl was saying, and then the two of them laughed.

Nearly every time in the last week that Severus had caught sight of his daughter, she was in the company of this same girl, and he remembered from his class list and from the Sorting ceremony that her surname was Avril.

It wasn't a name he was familiar with, but these days intermarriage between wizards and Muggles was increasingly common, even in the old families.

There was also a new aristocracy developing, of which families like the Malfoys were a part of, so it wasn't really any surprise that he hadn't heard the family name before.

MacNair, that was a name he knew of, and Yaxley. Both of the other first-year Slytherin girls came from families that Severus knew first-hand contained Death Eaters, let alone pureblood sympathisers.

Severus hadn't really known either of them particularly well, since they had attended Hogwarts well before he did, but he remembered them from the Dark Lord's inner circle.

He knew that the majority of students sorted into Slytherin were, or became, pureblood fanatics. Those that had entered school without the mania, like himself, had somehow left with it.

This was the main reason that Severus worried about Calista's company, now. At least two of the girls in her dormitory were related to Death Eaters, and this presented a problem.

To his knowledge, Calista  _wasn't_  a pureblood fanatic. They had never outright discussed the issue, but he had also never heard her use the word 'Mudblood', although he knew she had heard it before, and knew what it meant.

It was a touchy subject, because he didn't possess entirely innocent views on the matter himself. On the other hand, most of Calista's exposure to ideas of blood-purity had been from Bellatrix, and Severus could only begin to guess at the twisted ideas that she was capable of implanting on a child.

It occurred to Severus that the subject was one he would have to broach with his daughter soon.

He truly had no idea what he would say, and he feared this impending discussion even more than he had the discussion they'd had over the summer, when he had had to buy her all kinds of embarrassing books because she didn't have a mother to give her any of the normal pre-teen girl talks. Whatever those consisted of.

In that particular circumstance, Severus had been relieved when Calista had seemed as resistant to discussing anything in the books as he was. He figured she'd get out of them the necessities, and when she got old enough to think about dating, he would simply kill any boy that even thought about making eyes at her. He was glad that she didn't seem to have any aspirations towards that end, so far. The longer it could be delayed, the better.

To that end, Severus had misgivings from the beginning about Olivia Avril. She was the sort of delicately-built, blonde and blue-eyed girl that would almost surely develop into a true beauty, and already she carried herself with a great deal of self-assurance.

She clearly came from money, because all of her school robes were impeccably tailored, and she wore all sorts of jewellery and hair ornaments. Severus even thought he had smelled perfume when he'd leaned over her cauldron to inspect her boil cure potion.

She was quite mature, likely very cultured, obviously well-off, and even this early in the school year, Severus noted the way the other first-years deflected to her. She actually reminded him an awful lot of Lucius Malfoy.

If there was a type of girl that was likely to start trouble, Severus suspected it was Olivia Avril's type. He was also struck by the visual difference between the Avril girl and his own child when they stood side-by-side.

Where Olivia was tall and self-assured and impeccably put-together for an eleven-year-old, Calista appeared small and ragged by comparison. Her hair looked like she hadn't gotten all the tangles out of it, and while her robes looked fine, Severus knew that most of her everyday clothes were mismatched and probably looked worse for wear.

Calista also carried herself with her shoulders hunched and her head low, most of the time. He didn't think he had ever bought her any kind of hair ornaments, and she certainly didn't have any jewellery.

He had thought those kinds of things were for girls older than Calista, but was he wrong? She had never asked for any of those things, had never really asked for anything besides books, and things for her cat.

Watching Calista make her way to the table, looking like a lost mutt of a puppy at the glamorous Olivia's heels, Severus lost his appetite. He placed his fork down, and simply watched the Slytherin table surreptitiously for the rest of the meal.

He remembered how out-of-place he had felt when he was around Calista's age, and had begun to notice that none of the other students looked as ragged as he did; that none of them were wearing old hand-me-down clothes that were too large for them.

It had never been his intention to make Calista feel the same way; the truth was that she had hardly grown in the last three years or so, and had never asked for new clothes.

It wasn't the type of thing he was likely to remember on his own, since wardrobe was of such low importance to him as an adult. He had work robes and dress robes, and there was little need for anything else.

He supposed she had been eight or nine the last time that he had really taken her shopping for a lot of new clothes, and she had picked out a lot of things that looked very nice individually but clashed horribly when one tried to make an actual outfit out of any of them.

Severus really  _did_  take care of Calista the best he could, and it was unsettling and a bit painful for him to look at her and realize that, to most others, it probably looked like she wasn't really well-cared-for at all.

All the while he had been musing, he'd also been watching the Slytherin table. Olivia was definitely calling the shots among the first-years, but he noticed a key difference between his own beginnings at Hogwarts and Calista's.

He had always been, at least in the beginning, on the outskirts of the group, tolerated but not quite accepted until he had begun to impress some of the older students with his knowledge of the Dark Arts.

Calista, however, was quite obviously a part of the group. Though Olivia appeared to be doing most of the talking, whenever Calista did say something, the others seemed to listen. He saw them chuckle at a joke she made, which, judging from the direction she'd tilted her head in, was likely at a Gryffindor's expense.

Severus honestly didn't know if Calista's quick acceptance among the Slytherins was a good thing or a bad thing; he supposed he should be glad that she seemed to be acclimating so well, but he had a strong suspicion that, in order to fit in, she was going to lose part of herself.

When it had happened to him, it had set him on a path that had cost him nearly everything he cared about.

He definitely needed to have a chat with his daughter.

**o-o-o-o**

On Saturday morning, Calista was surprised to see her father sitting at the staff table. She noticed him as soon as she entered, but then Olivia was speaking, and Calista shifted her attention to her classmate.

Olivia was talking about a recent trip she had taken to Knockturn Alley with her parents. It seemed to involve a lot of witty observations on Olivia's part, most of them derisive of Muggles and Muggle-borns.

At the breakfast table, most of the others were talking about the previous afternoon's Quidditch tryouts. Marcus Flint had made Chaser, and was the only second-year to make it to the team that year.

"You could've gone out, Calista," Marcus sent generously, "You're real small, I bet you'd make a good Seeker."

Calista wasn't really sure if he meant it as an insult or a compliment, so she decided to just ignore the comment altogether. She turned back to Olivia, who had gone off on a tangent from her story.

"Of course, Mother has a cousin who married a Muggle - we don't keep in touch with her. But in my direct lineage, there isn't anyone with Muggle blood for at  _least_  six generations."

Olivia gloated, while some of the other students began to share their own family trees. Some of them counted back generations to an obscure Muggle ancestor her or there. A few shamefacedly admitted to having a Muggle aunt or grandparent.

"What about you, Calista?" Portia MacNair asked nasally, "How many generations have you got?"

"Oh, er, quite a lot, I think," Calista answered, unprepared for the question. "I think I, uh, have a Muggle cousin or something somewhere, too."

Olivia overheard and nodded, touching Calista lightly on the back of her hand.

"Don't worry, I have a hard time remembering which cousin of my mother's married a Muggle too. You simply don't remember people who aren't important."

Calista decided to let Olivia's misinterpretation stand.

**o-o-o-o**

Midmorning, when Olivia and Portia had gone to the Quidditch pitch again to watch the team practise and Emily Yaxley was working on an essay, Calista took a walk to the Potions classroom. Next door to it, there was a door that Calista knew led to a short corridor, with his office on one side of it and his quarters on the other.

It felt a bit strange to be entering as a guest instead of a resident. Feeling a little awkward, Calista knocked on his office door.

"Come in," he called from beyond the door, and Calista pushed the door open. He was sitting at his desk, correcting what looked to be homework essays from her own class the previous day.

"Oh," she said, not sure why she felt awkward, "Are you busy?"

In answer, Severus set down his quill and stood up. He opened the office door, and crossed the hall to the door that led to his quarters, indicating that she should follow.

Calista eased his office door shut, and followed him into the flat she had shared with him for five years. Nothing had really changed over the summer, and she felt at home as soon as she'd stepped over the threshold.

Severus motioned for Calista to take a seat at the small kitchen table. Since the room that would have been his sitting room had been converted into an extra bedroom for Calista, and both chairs in his study were currently piled high with books, it was really the only place they could sit and chat.

Calista actually felt a little glad that he had evidently not restored her bedroom to its original purpose.

Severus sat down at the table after Calista did, and brought his gaze to her face.

"Well," he said, "I gather you're enjoying your classes. Professor Flitwick stopped me in the hall on the way back from breakfast this morning to tell what a good Ravenclaw you'd make. I suppose he meant it as a compliment."

Calista sneered, perhaps not the reaction Severus was expecting, although he should have known better by now.

"And be in the same House as that Clearwater girl and her fat friend? I'd rather not."

"I take it that you and Miss Clearwater do not get along?"

Calista shrugged. "She's just a know-it-all."

Severus had to work to keep his expression neutral. He found it amusing that Calista would refer to another student in this light, when Flitwick had told him that Calista had already written him two extra-credit assignments.

"Well," he said, "Be that as it may, are you enjoying most of your classes?"

"I like Transfiguration," she said, "And Charms is okay, I guess. I don't care much for Herbology or History of Magic, like I knew I wouldn't. Potions is my favourite, of course."

Severus quirked a brow. "I'd think you would find the class boring. Your own skills are fairly far ahead of the first-year curriculum.

Calista beamed at the compliment – coming from her father, it was high praise indeed.

"Yes, well," she said, "At least it's interesting. It makes me eager to learn more advanced potions."

Severus noted that she hadn't wasted her time trying to brush off his praise, or insist that she wasn't very far ahead of the class. Good. She  _was_  much further along than any of them were.

"I don't think we will be covering a great deal of material that's new to you until fourth year or even later," he admitted. "Although… hm."

"What?" Calista cocked her head, and Severus studied her for a moment.

"Perhaps, if you are interested, I can teach you extra lessons on Saturdays."

This actually wasn't what Severus had been thinking of, but what had actually occurred to him was something best discussed with the Headmaster first. He had actually been wondering if Dumbledore would allow him to move Calista up to a fourth-year class, but he didn't want to get her hopes up yet.

Severus expected Calista to jump at the opportunity for extra lessons, since she was an eager student, and it would give them some time together without a classroom full of other students.

He was surprised when Calista answered him.

"Actually… I think Olivia wants me to go to the Quidditch games with her, and they're mostly on Saturdays."

Severus convinced himself in mere seconds that his feelings weren't hurt.

"Ah yes, Miss Avril. Do you know much about her family?"

Calista tilted her head. "Uhm… she said she's got a second cousin who married a Muggle, or something like that."

It was a perfect leeway into another conversation Severus had been meaning to have with his daughter.

"I expect she's not exactly proud of that particular branch of her family tree?" he prodded.

Calista shook her head. "Not exactly… Father?"

Severus heard something in her tone that caused him to abandon whatever he had planned to say next.

"Yes?"

"I know I'm not a pureblood. She told me that. But… what am I? I mean… how much… how many…?"

Severus knew exactly what she was asking, despite her apparent difficulty with the framing of the question. It was unusual. Calista was nearly always very direct, at least with him.

"My father was a Muggle," he answered tightly, "I do not believe your mother had any direct ancestors that were Muggles or Muggle-born witches or wizards."

There was an iciness to his answer that was multi-faceted. He didn't like to speak about his own father, but he also remembered that Bellatrix had often insinuated that he was somehow inferior because of his blood status.

Most of the time, he was fairly certain that the only reason Bella had engaged in a brief fling with him was because it would infuriate her family, who he knew had pressured her into marrying Rodolphus because of his blood status. She had not made a secret of the fact that she hadn't wanted to marry him, not when she was truly, at least according to popular opinion, in love with the Dark Lord.

"So," Calista interrupted his reverie, "That means I'm one-fourth Muggle?"

Severus frowned. "In a manner of speaking, I suppose so."

"Is that bad?"

Severus regarded her solemnly, his features tight. He was certain there was an answer to her question that he was supposed to give, as her father, but he didn't really know what it was. How to reconcile his own personal prejudices with his desire to ensure that she turned out as far from Bellatrix as possible?

"I suppose that depends on whom you're asking," he settled for, "Some of your classmates might tell you that it is. I, however, see nothing in you that would indicate that you have anything in common with your Muggle ancestors."

It was decidedly a sidestep from actually answering the question of Muggle inferiority. It was also another compliment he paid his daughter, but then again, she had not known Tobias Snape, so she could not know how well it spoke of her character, to Severus' mind, to have nothing in common with her grandfather.

As if she'd read his mind, Calista asked him another question.

"What was your father like?"

Severus gritted his teeth. He supposed he'd known the question would come eventually.

"He was a talentless brute, and he didn't care for anything or anyone, least of all his family."

Another child's expression would have softened, and the questioning would likely be at an end, but not Calista.

"What about your mother?"

Severus was no longer seeing his daughter before him, was instead caught up in memories of his own unpleasant childhood.

"She meant well, I suppose, but she was… weak. She never stood up to him, even when she could have knocked him flat with magic."

Severus was jolted back to the present by something unexpected; his daughter's arms around him. At first, he mistook her affection for pity, and recoiled, but when he caught sight of her expression, he reconsidered.

Calista had left her chair and come to stand by his, hugging him. It was honestly a gesture that was rare for them, though not unheard of.

The expression on her face wasn't one of pity, though. He wasn't sure what to categorize it as, but the closest he could come was anger.

"So both of us had bad mothers," she said, and Severus pushed her away slightly, his tone firm.

"No," he said, "You misunderstand me. My mother had her faults, but in the end, she was still my mother. Bellatrix was never a mother to you. No one who abuses their child the way she abused you deserves that title."

It was the first time that Severus had directly alluded to the fact that Calista was a victim of child abuse, and she felt oddly light after hearing it. Of course she had always known, and Severus had made it clear, that Bellatrix's treatment of her was wrong.

Still, having the ability to categorize it as something that had a clear name, that others had dealt with as well, helped.

Perhaps it was this unexpected relief of a burden that caused Calista to say what she did next.

"Were you ever in love with her? With my… with Bellatrix?"

The question seemed to have come from nowhere, and Severus wished it had stayed there. His expression never wavered, however.

"No," he said simply.

Calista would have liked to ask him a few more questions, but there was something dangerous in his eyes that warned her not to pry any further.

She was struck, not for the first time, by the unfair balance between herself and her father, where she felt he knew almost everything about her, and she knew almost nothing about him. Severus would have argued, but she didn't put it into words.

Looking at her father now though, she knew this was not the time to discuss it.

"I'm sorry," she said, and she wasn't sure exactly what she was apologizing for. It wasn't really in her nature to be contrite.

Severus stood up, and Calista took it as her cue to leave. Just as he was seeing her out of his quarters, he said one last thing, a peace offering of sorts.

"You scored top marks on your homework, by the way."

Calista smirked, a gesture that was highly reminiscent of his own reaction to being given the same news almost twenty years before, but he didn't see the similarity.

"I expected I would," she said simply, and left the room, closing the door behind her.


	4. Chapter 4

_Calista was running over a field of broken glass. She could hear the crunch of it beneath her weight, felt shards slicing the bottoms of her feet, but she was blind to the pain._

_She twisted her head, looked over her shoulder – no. Bellatrix was closer, so close that Calista could feel the iciness that seemed to surround her._

_Calista tore her eyes away from the figure of her mother, looked instead at the ground of broken glass._

_Except, she wasn't running over broken glass. She was running over bone. Thousands and thousands of fragments of human bone, oily-slick with blood but still jagged and sharp enough to cut into her feet and ankles as she ran._

_A hand reached for her ankle, pulling her backwards – no! Calista struggled to pull free, looked over her shoulder again._

_And then she fell. Panicked and twisting, Calista looked towards her now-throbbing ankle, held in a death grip. It wasn't Bellatrix holding her back, but a skeletal hand, rising from the pile of bone she had been running across._

_The hand was holding her fast, and more of them were rising up, gripping her wrists, her legs. One hand snaked up and grabbed her neck, and she couldn't breathe…_

Reducto! _She thought frantically, but it was no use. She didn't have her wand._

_A rolling, hoarse laugh invaded her senses, and she forgot, for just an instant, to panic because of the bony hand encircling her throat._

_Instead, she panicked because Bellatrix was hovering over her, wand pointed straight down to where Calista was held captive._

Crucio _, Bellatrix mouthed. Calista couldn't hear her voice, but she knew the form of the incantation on her lips all too well._

_There was pain, and it was so consuming that it overpowered everything else, and Calista was no longer aware of the skeletal hands holding her fast, of the cuts and scrapes on her feet, of anything but Bellatrix's madness._

_Calista heard one string of a whisper, and it came from faraway but it was in Bellatrix's voice._

_You are mine, Daughter._

Calista woke up screaming. She pressed her hands to her mouth, at first afraid that she would be alerting Bellatrix to her location, and then, as the reality of where she was sank in, afraid of waking up the other girls in her room.

She looked about, expecting with a sinking heart to see all of the girls bolt upright, staring at her like she belonged in the insanity ward of St. Mungo's.

It was quiet in the room, except for her own panicked breathing, and an occasional snore from Portia. Slowly, the realization came to Calista that she hadn't screamed aloud – haven't even made a sound.

She choked on a bitter laugh. Even in her sleep, she knew that crying out would only enrage and encourage Bellatrix.

Knowing that sleep was lost to her for the night, Calista slipped silently out of bed, and crept down the hall to the common room. She opened one of her textbooks almost at random, and forced herself to read even when the lines blurred. Anything, to keep sleep, and Bellatrix, at bay.

**o-o-o-o**

As Calista sat, morosely picking at a bowl of porridge topped with raisins, she could find nothing to be content with, except that it was Friday.

Her only class this morning was Potions, and since she was now dead tired after having been ripped from her sleep by another of her dreams, and spending the rest of the night studying, she was at least thankful for that small allowance from fate.

It took Olivia three tries to catch Calista's attention and remind her that they had to get to class.

"I don't think Professor Snape will tolerate  _anyone_  being late to class, not even you," she said tartly, "So let's be on our way, shall we?"

Calista only nodded, not having the energy to speak, and gathered her cauldron and Potions book.

Only moments after Calista walked into Potions class, she knew she'd have to recant her gratitude for it being Friday, and thus an easy morning.

Her father – Professor Snape – had transcribed an ingredients list on the chalkboard at the head of the room for a Draught of Drowsiness.

It was a very mild sleeping potion that Calista had never made, but had taken plenty of times as a younger child, when she was too frightened by her nightmares to sleep, but her father had thought it unwise to give her anything stronger.

"You will work with a partner today. You have the length of the class period to complete your draught. I understand that none of you have other classes today, so if I were you I'd pay careful attention to detail, because anyone producing anything short of perfection will be remaining after class."

A flurry of whispers broke out between the students.

"Work with me, Calista," Olivia whispered, just as Calista had turned to her other side to ask Emily Yaxley to be her partner. Emily was better at Potions than Olivia, and Calista was so exhausted and anxious that she'd feel better if she had a partner she didn't have to watch so closely.

Calista turned away before even opening her mouth, and nodded to Olivia. Even this far into the school year, she knew which of her fellow students to remain on good terms with.

The week prior, Portia had offended Olivia somehow and was still shunned at mealtimes by the rest of the first-years. Calista had found cause to disagree with Olivia on a number of occasions, but each of them concerned something so minor that it had never outweighed the risk of becoming the outcast again.

Across the room, Percy Weasley had already been cajoled into working with Oliver Wood, who was solidly at the bottom of the class.

There was a whirl of a cloak, and then Professor Snape faced the class again, almost as an afterthought.

"I will assign partners," he said softly.

He assigned Emily with Lucas Slater, a Gryffindor, but then paired most of the rest of the students with members of their own house. When the last four students left were herself, Olivia, Wood, and Weasley, Calista was glad she hadn't snubbed Olivia to ask Emily to be partners, since they'd be paired together anyway.

"Mr. Wood and Miss Avril will work together, I think. Calista, you are paired with Mr. Weasley."

Calista nearly dropped her cauldron on her foot in her shock, but recovered just in time. She looked up at her father, but his eyes were utterly unreadable, his expression grim.

Percy crossed the room and spread his ingredients out on the table, looking no happier with the arrangement than she felt about it.

Deciding to just ignore him, and ignore the fact that her father had paired her with him for this assignment, she set to chopping her dandelion roots in precise, even pieces.

Beside her, Percy methodically ground trolls' teeth into a fine powder. For several long moments, the only sounds between them were the steady chop-chopping of her knife, and the hushed grinding sound between Percy's mortar and pestle.

Calista cleared her throat, and set her knife down, turning to Percy.

"My cauldron is better quality," she said, "It'll distribute the heat more evenly, so we'll use it for our potion. But can I use yours to stew the dandelion roots in?"

Percy blinked, and then nodded, pushing his cauldron from his far side to the space between where he and Calista worked.

"Of course, help yourself."

Calista used her wand to fill the cauldron partway with a jet of clear water, and put the cauldron over a flame. Since it was a magical flame, and she was only heating water and not volatile or temperamental potions ingredients, the water boiled within a minute.

She selected a small mesh bag from her potions supplies and stuffed the dandelion roots into it, cinching and tying off the top, and then dropped the bag into the water, leaving the end of the string dangling over the lip of the cauldron, like a teabag.

"Thanks," she finally remembered to say, belatedly, to Percy. It felt awkward, to thank a Gryffindor for anything.

"Oh, you're welcome," Percy said automatically, glancing up. He caught sight of her dandelion teabag and glanced around the room, ascertaining that they were the only pair with such a setup.

"That's a good idea," he offered, and Calista thought he still sounded too eagerly friendly, "Since it preserves the roots in a more pristine condition until they're added to the rest of the draught."

Calista cut him a sideways look.

"I know what it does," she said shortly, "I'm the one that did it."

Percy looked wounded, and then he turned back to his troll teeth, which were already ground quite fine enough. Sighing, he set the powder aside, and began slicing mayweed stems lengthwise.

While the dandelion roots stewed, Calista took it upon herself to prepare the rest of the ingredients, besides the trolls' teeth and the mayweed.

As she prepared the final ingredient, four sopophorous beans, by crushing them with the flat of her blade, Percy was left with nothing to do.

He made to lift the dandelion roots out of the cauldron to check on them, but Calista glared at him in a manner so reminiscent of her father, that he couldn't help but glance around the room to make sure that the professor still had an alibi.

He did, and it involved glowering over the cauldron that Olivia Avril and Oliver Wood were sharing, and denouncing the way their roots were handled, as well as the way their mayweed was sliced.

"I'm keeping track of them," Calista assured him icily, and Percy was taken aback, and huffed in irritation.

Professor Snape chose that moment, of course, to walk by them and inspect their cauldron. Since Calista had several of the ingredients in her possession, Percy hadn't been able to start the first part of the mixture, and their cauldron was empty.

Percy braced himself, but Snape simply moved on, without a word.

Calista extinguished the flame beneath Percy's cauldron, and worked against the clock to get the other steps of the potion completed. If the dandelion roots cooled off too much, they'd be just as useless as if she had let them continue to boil.

"You know, if you'd allowed me to do more than smash things, I could have prepared this part for you, so you could just add the dandelion roots right away." Percy pointed out.

Calista was quiet for a moment, and then she noticed Olivia watching their exchange intently, her own potion momentarily forgotten and decidedly the wrong colour. Wood frantically tried to fix it by dumping more trolls' teeth in, but Calista could tell even from here there were already too many.

"Well," Calista said snidely, cutting a brief glance at Olivia, "I wanted it done right. I'm not going to fail just because I was paired with a bone-headed Gryffindor."

Olivia smirked, looking smug. Calista was so caught up in observing this, and then in Olivia and Wood's potion slowly bubble over the top of their cauldron while Wood frantically tried everything to make it recede again, that she quite missed Percy's reaction.

His face flushed red, and then went pale. He opened his mouth and then closed it. And then he decided that he was never going to try to be friendly to a Slytherin again.

Percy and Calista achieved top marks on their potion, but Percy couldn't even be glad for it, since he hadn't been allowed to help.

Just as they had cleaned up their supplies, and Percy swept out of the room without so much as a backward glance, Calista heard herself being summoned to the head of the room, where Professor Snape stood, supervising the clean-up of some of the more catastrophic mistakes of the class period.

"Calista," he called softly, but in a voice that brooked no argument, "You will remain after class for a moment."

Calista nodded, although his gaze was no longer on her, but on Olivia's retreating back as she left the dungeons, leaving Wood to clean up the mess both of them had made.

When there was no one left in the dungeon classroom besides father and daughter, Severus placed his hand on Calista's shoulder and guided her towards his office. Inside, he closed the door, and took a seat behind his desk.

Calista took the remaining chair, facing him.

"Why did you pair me with Weasley?" she asked, without preamble.

Severus levelled his unreadable gaze at her, and waited an infuriating moment to answer.

"Because he has the highest marks in the class, after yourself," he answered, and he almost sounded tired, beneath the snappish overtones.

"What about Emily?" she challenged, although even she didn't know why she was bothering, since before being assigned partners she had been about to work with Olivia.

"Miss Yaxley ranks third in the class, after Mr. Weasley," he said, and then waved his hand as though it was of no importance. "But it doesn't matter, evidently, who you are partnered with, since you will insist on doing all the work anyway."

"I wanted it done r—" Calista began, and Severus interrupted her.

"I assure you that Mr. Weasley is just as capable of producing a Drowsiness Draught as you are," he said, "Which is precisely why I paired you together."

"If we both could have done it, why make us work as a team?" she challenged. Even as the words came out of her mouth, Calista asked herself silently why she was fighting him.

She didn't really care anymore who she'd been paired with, since the class was over and she'd passed. Why, when it came to her father, did she always want to argue with him?

"I'd assumed – correctly, I can see – that you hadn't slept well last night. I thought you'd appreciate a class in which you  _didn't_  have to scrape your friend Miss Avril's mark up off the floor with your own efforts, but I can see that I was mistaken."

Silence.

Finally, "How did you know I didn't sleep well?"

There was no use denying it; whenever Severus professed to know anything, no matter how improbable the knowledge was for him to come by, he  _did_  know it. Calista knew this well enough by now.

He looked slightly surprised for a fraction of a second, or perhaps only exasperated.

"You were calling out last night."

It took her a moment of processing, of remembering that she hadn't made a sound, to realize what he meant.

Calista scowled and focused her gaze on her fingernails. "I wasn't trying to."

"I gathered that," he said, outwardly emotionless, "Which is why I didn't storm the Slytherin dormitories to make sure you were all right."

In that moment, for no reason she could name, Calista felt like crying. It would have been such a relief, like peeling the dead skin off an old wound, but she wouldn't. Not in front of her father, who she knew placed such a high regard on self-control.

"So," Severus said, after another long silence, " _Are_  you all right?"

She briefly considered lying, but he would know, so there wasn't much point other than further antagonizing him.

"I had another… dream," she said haltingly, "But… truly, just a dream. You don't need to worry."

"Are you certain that's all it was?"

"Yes," she answered too quickly.

Severus raised an eyebrow, and Calista was obligated to elaborate.

"It wasn't like… before," she said, unwilling even to verbalize Bellatrix's attack on her mind, "It really was just a nightmare."

Severus fixed his eyes on Calista's face for a long moment.

"I am not going to force you to tell me about your nightmares, if you don't want to," he said at last, "But when you have a dream that seems unusual, or that you awake from and still feel that something isn't right, you  _must_  tell me, immediately."

"'When'? Don't you mean 'if'?"

"No, I don't," Severus answered, smoothing a small stack of papers on his desk, "Bellatrix will attempt to harm you again, whether it is tomorrow or in ten years' time. As long as she lives, you are in danger."

"Can't we just kill her and then I can stop worrying?" Calista muttered.

Severus made a rude noise and disrupted some of the papers on his desk.

"Do you think, if it were that simple, that it wouldn't already have been done?"

Calista shivered, because something in her father's tone reminded her of how he had met Bellatrix in the first place: they had both been part of the Dark Lord's inner circle. Which meant, she thought, her mid racing, that her father was just as capable of torture and murder as her mother was.

Her eyes wandered from his face to scan the shelves of books behind him. Half of them were tomes of Dark magic. On the shelves of her father's personal library, Calista imagined she could find the methods to kill Bellatrix a thousand times over.

Or to kill anyone, really.

**o-o-o-o**

The truth was, Severus had never wanted Calista, at least not in the abstract sense.

If he had known, when he serviced Bellatrix as a lover, that their union would produce a child, he never would have done what he did, and he would have been doubly loathe to it if he had truly understood the cruelties that Bellatrix would impose on that child.

It had been shortly after his initiation into the Dark Lord's circle, and only almost as shortly after his fateful argument with Lily Evans.

He had been hurting, metaphorically licking his wounds, because all of his attempts to reconcile with Lily had been fruitless. It had seemed, even from that early stage, that she was cutting her ties to him completely.

Bellatrix was beautiful in those days, and evil or not, she had always been magnetic. She had been twenty-three, and everyone knew she was dissatisfied with her new husband. She was cold and cruel, but she was a very talented witch, and had brains to match her exquisite figure.

At sixteen, resentful after his first true heartbreak, and already far too deep in a dark organization that he could never safely back out of, Severus had felt overwhelmed. He was talented, brilliant, and corruptible. And to Bellatrix, who seemed determined to prove to Rodolphus that she had no love for him, Severus was also easy prey. That their affair continued even after her husband's death was perhaps the most surprising aspect of it all.

Bellatrix, who at first was intoxicating because of her madness, soon became tiresome and frightening because of the very same thing. She and Severus had only carried on a handful of times, over a span of perhaps three or four months, before she had moved on, and he had left her bed feeling quite possibly worse about himself than ever before.

He had stopped trying to reconcile with Lily after that. He had felt, somehow, that he no longer deserved her.

But it wasn't only himself. Bellatrix had taken so many lovers during that time that when she became quite obviously pregnant, it hadn't even occurred to Severus that the child could be his.

At first, he had assumed she was pregnant with her husband's child, but when the child was born, the timing didn't quite add up. Others noticed this too, but when called out, she had only said that it didn't matter who had fathered the child; it only mattered that the girl was raised in the proper tradition.

She boasted that her daughter would become the Dark Lord's most reassured servant, but as it turned out, the Dark Lord had no interest in infants.

This had left Bellatrix in a bad position, but she had made the best of it in her twisted way, and taken to raising the child herself, still with the intention of committing the girl to Voldemort's service at the first opportunity.

This was the part that everyone had known.

Once, she had brought the child with her to a meeting of the Death Eaters. She had been punished, since the Dark Lord had already made his utter lack of interest in Bella's baby clear.

It was the glimpse of a small, dark head that first unsettled Severus. If he had begun to suspect at that point in time, that the child might be his, he had not admitted it to himself yet.

Instead, the idea had festered within him for years, a seed of doubt that was nourished even through his darkest times, when he lost the only woman he had ever loved.

He had a dream, only months after the Potters had been killed and the Dark Lord had vanished. In it, he was married to Lily, and they had a child. She handed the child to him, and he looked down to see that it was wearing Bella's face.

The next day, Bellatrix had been apprehended by Aurors, and thrown in Azkaban, To Severus, it felt like it could not possibly be mere coincidence, so he had gone to Albus Dumbledore, and asked about Bellatrix's child. A day and a half later, he met Calista. The instant he saw her face, he knew – because she looked like him, far more than she looked like Bellatrix. She had his nose (for which he pitied her), and his complexion, and his eyes, which was perhaps the most startling thing of all.

When he had asked Dumbledore about the child, he had not intended to take her home. He had only intended to ensure that she was alive, was doing all right. After all, Bellatrix was in Azkaban, and he doubted there was anyone else that would think of checking in on her child.

He had hoped to avoid the question of parentage altogether, because if the child's father was unknown, then she could remain nothing to him; but if he knew that he was her father, there would be a whole new set of decisions to be made, decisions Severus didn't care to think about.

And then he had seen her, and the decision had been made for him. She was most assuredly his, and beneath the malicious hostility in her dark, dark eyes, he had seen in that first instant that she desperately needed him.

He hadn't planned on having children, and he most certainly hadn't planned on being a single father. Almost every day, he questioned whether he had truly done the right thing, because he knew he wasn't affectionate enough, or understanding enough, or even kind enough to constitute a good parent.

Only, as it turned out, it wasn't affection, or understanding, or even kindness that Calista needed. It was acceptance, and persistence, and protection.

Acceptance, because at her tender age she had been terribly scarred, but she didn't have the ability or the inclination to ask for help. Persistence, because she was a prisoner of her own personality. Protection because, as long as her mother lived, she would never be safe.

Now, years later, Severus still didn't want a child. He would never tell Calista, because she wouldn't, couldn't understand. It wasn't because he didn't love her that he sometimes wished she'd never been born; it was because he loved her so powerfully that he could not stand to see her suffer. But then, selfishly, at the same, time, he was glad for the fact that she had been born, that everything had turned out the way it had, because he had her now, and he could not help but remember what Dumbledore had told him - that Calista adored him, that he was her hero - and he had never been seen in that light. Knowing that it was likely true only made him want to assure that it didn't change.

She was far too young to be aware of all the things she was aware of, and he knew that already, she thought of herself as having two possible paths for her life: She would either spend her childhood learning how to kill her mother, or her mother would destroy her first. Severus knew there were other options, but Calista was still young, and she tended to see things in black and white.

If it turned out that she was correct, if she couldn't protect herself from destruction without destroying her mother, Severus did not know which would be worse for the girl's soul. What he did know was that Calista was part of his life now – was, in fact, most of it – and he would guide her towards the path that might at least save his own soul, even if it put both of them at terrible risk.

For if Bellatrix did destroy Calista, he thought it would rend his soul as if he had committed a thousand murders.


	5. Chapter 5

"You miserable bastard -– did you see that? Foul!" Olivia Avril howled, shaking her fist in the direction of the Quidditch pitch. She shook Calista's shoulder to get her attention.

"Yeah, what a git," Calista said absently, still furiously scribbling on a scrap of parchment, a textbook open on her lap.

The first Quidditch match of the season was a Gryffindor-Slytherin match, which meant that the stands were full and tension was high. Every single pair of eyes – save one – was fixed on the action in the pitch.

Instead of watching the action, Calista crossed out a diagram she had just spent twenty minutes drawing, and started from scratch, referring to an index of her textbook intermittently.

Frustrated, Calista pulled the mitten off of her left hand with her teeth, and wrapped the fingers of that hand again around her quill.

Ever since writing the essay on the Silencing Charm for Professor Flitwick, Calista had been intrigued. This was only the latest in a string of days that she had dedicated to researching the implications she had seen in the story of Casseiopia's discoveries.

When magic wands had first been introduced as a mainstream tool for wizardry, countless rituals and incantations had been adapted for use with the new tool. The ritualistic dance once used to perform a Silencing Charm had been adapted, along with a lot of other similar rituals, into a simple incantation and wrist movement.

Calista wondered if there was any way to do the opposite: to take a spell performed with a wand, and find a way it perform it without.

She knew that some very skilled wizards could deliberately perform certain spells without their wands, but they would always be disadvantaged in a duel against an opponent that was armed.

But what if there was a way to use another tool besides a wand – say, a series of movements, as in the original Silencing Charm?

Calista knew that working backwards like this would be useless in most circumstances. There wasn't much point in performing a five-minute dance when you could just as easily wave your wand.

Except, Calista remembered that Bellatrix was extremely skilled at Disarming.

The stands erupted in noise, and Calista blinked and looked up, distracted from her studies. The Slytherin spectators were cheering and jumping up and down, but most of the others looked disheartened.

"Come on," Olivia said, grabbing Calista's elbow and knocking her parchment and textbook down, "Let's go congratulate the team!"

Olivia rolled her eyes while Calista gathered her things, and by the time she had it all together, Olivia was already part of the crowd surrounding the players. Calista started in that direction, but then shrugged and went back into the castle instead.

She really didn't understand the attraction to the sport – and she hated flying. She hadn't even taken Flying lessons with her classmates, although her father had warned her that she'd have to eventually. She was looking at the delay as an opportunity to find a way to avoid it altogether, for the simple reason that she was terrified of it.

She'd rather die than let Olivia or any of the others find that out, though. Marcus Flint was always pestering her to try out for Reserve Seeker, because of her size, but she kept telling him she was too busy with her studies, rather than admitting the truth.

Calista made her way to the common room, and opened her textbook, planning to continue her research, but then an explosion of noise in the corridor erupted, steadily growing in volume and proximity until it occupied the common room.

Well. It appeared as though the Slytherins wanted to celebrate their Quidditch victory. Calista closed her book and slipped it under her arm, intending to carry it to the Potions classroom, where peace and quiet was assured on a Saturday afternoon.

As she made her way towards the door though, a hand caught her elbow, causing her to drop her book, and she spun around, prepared to be furious.

It was Marcus Flint that had caught her elbow, but he had done so at the behest of Olivia, who was pushing through the crowd of green-clad celebrators to reach Calista.

"Come on, Snape," Olivia goaded, "Have a little fun. You don't need to study 'round the clock."

Marcus Flint nodded, although Calista doubted his ability to even understand what he was bobbing his head in agreement to, thick as he was.

"That's easy for you to say," Calista muttered, "You're nearly failing Potions."

"What?" Olivia shook her head, indicating that she couldn't hear over the music that had begun blasting through the common room.

Calista looked around, saw smiles on every face but her own, and shook her head.

"Nothing," she said, and picked up her book only to abandon it on a study table, and join the revelries.

**o-o-o-o**

As the winter holidays approached, the castle suddenly became host to all sorts of fascinating creatures. Trees bedecked with garlands and ribbons stood sentry in several corners, only to move down the hall or to another level entirely when they got bored.

Flitwick had procured several red and green fairies to flit about his classroom singing Christmas carols, and Professor Sprout had even managed to catch a garden gnome in one of the greenhouses, and stuck a St. Nicholas cap on it.

There wasn't any snow outside, but that hardly seemed to matter, since there was so much merriment inside the castle.

Flitwick and Sprout gave the students a break, and didn't assign any homework to be due at the end of the Christmas Break, but McGonagall and Snape both seemed determined to provide extra homework to make up for the week of missed classes.

Calista didn't really mind the Potions homework, but Transfiguration was proving challenging for her. She had an entire week now to transform a pot into a kettle and write twelve inches of parchment on how she had done it, and she suspected she'd need the all that time.

Somehow, things never went quite right for her in McGonagall's class. She was so used to being at the top of the class in all her other subjects that it frustrated her to no end to be solidly in the middle of this one.

The Head of Gryffindor often accused her of trying too hard and overcomplicating it, but Calista didn't see how trying any  _less_  was going to produce better results.

She considered asking McGonagall for extra help after class, but this early in the year, she usually only offered it to students who were really struggling, and Calista was at least passing.

Besides, she was proud, and didn't want to give the Gryffindor Head the satisfaction of asking for help.

She decided instead to seek help from her father. He might be a stern and strict teacher, but at least she was comfortable learning from him, and knew what to expect.

Since Christmas was on a Friday that year, students only had to attend class on Monday and Tuesday of that week. On Wednesday, those who wished to go home for the holidays were excused until the Monday following New Year's Day.

Severus had only made arrangements to lease their flat during the summer months, so Calista was going to be staying at Hogwarts for the holiday.

A few days before term recessed for the holidays, Calista found herself glumly contemplating that she'd have no one but her cat to spend the break with. Once, she would have preferred this arrangement, but now it made her feel lonely.

"It won't be that bad," Emily Yaxley had said, in a rare show of friendship, "We'll be back before you know it."

"There's to be a feast on Christmas Day," Olivia had added, "Of course, it won't be anything like the one Mother's having at our townhouse in Bearsden, but I'm sure you'll enjoy it."

Calista had picked up on the slight, but one glance at miserable Portia MacNair had been sufficient to restrain her from commenting on it.

"Yeah," she had said flatly, "I'm sure it will be great."

**o-o-o-o**

Calista had never had friends to purchase Christmas presents for before, so she really had no idea what she was supposed to do.

She had always drawn pictures for her father's Christmas gift, and even though he had hung them all up in his office (at least when she was younger – he had complied with her request to spare her the humiliation of having them seen by students that were now her classmates) she felt far too old at eleven to continue the trend.

This year, she wanted to get her father a real gift, not a scribbled drawing of a cat, especially given everything they had been through in the past year.

Calista did receive a small allowance from her father, which she had so far used almost exclusively for purchasing books. Since a month into the term though, she had been saving the money instead, to use for Christmas gifts.

It was still a strange concept to her, since holidays with her father had always been a muted affair. Usually, he took her to a bookstore, or to the Apothecary, and let her pick something.

She had mentioned this to Olivia, who had burst out laughing and congratulated Calista on the good joke, before going on describe her own holiday yields of dresses and toys, and even, one year, a pony. She hadn't mentioned it again.

So she still had no idea what was expected of her, but Olivia had dropped strong hints that she was giving gifts to all of the first-year girls, even Portia.

Calista was pretty certain that Olivia had spread the word in the hopes that the girls would feel obligated to return the favour, but she didn't want to be the only one not to.

First years weren't allowed to visit Hogsmeade, although Calista was fairly certain she could have convinced her father to take her on a weekend anyway.

She felt oddly embarrassed about asking him to take her into the village to buy Christmas gifts though, because it would be alluding to the fact that she'd never had to do it before.

Instead, she'd found an ad in the  _Daily Prophet_  for a gift catalogue, and had requested it. She'd found things for her friends, but there wasn't much in the book of fairly clichéd gifts that she thought would interest her father.

The question of what to give her father for Christmas haunted Calista for weeks. When the parcels she had ordered for her friends were delivered, and she wrapped them clumsily in green paper, she still didn't know what to get for him.

She considered buying him a book, but she didn't know of any he wanted and didn't already have. He had all sorts of potions ingredients and paraphernalia at his disposal. In truth, Calista was hard-pressed to think of  _anything_ he'd be interested in, and didn't already own, that she could obtain.

She racked her brain, knowing that she was running out of time. What could she give him that he didn't already have?

And then, five days before Christmas, she knew.

She cursed herself for not thinking of it sooner, hoping fervently that she'd have enough time to do what she wanted to. She knew she was cutting it close, but the catalogue did say they had twenty-four hour express delivery.

On Tuesday morning, when a huge parcel arrived for her, she found herself for once thankful that Severus didn't often eat breakfast in the Great Hall.

If he had seen the huge package that was air-dropped into Calista's porridge, he surely would have asked questions. As it was, she wondered if he had noticed the absence his owl when she'd used it to place the order.

Now she only had to pretend, until Christmas morning, that she hadn't gotten him anything. The surprise was half of the gift, after all.

**o-o-o-o**

Since all of the Slytherin first-years but Calista were going home for the holidays, the students agreed to exchange presents on Wednesday morning, before everyone else left.

Calista had purchased a set of bright, pretty hair ribbons for Olivia, who seemed to like them, although she had fished around in the wrapping as though expecting there should be more.

For Emily, who Calista had noticed took an awful lot of notes in class, she had purchased a set of quills which were pre-filled with several differently-coloured inks, thinking they'd be useful for colour-coding her notes.

She'd gotten Portia a box of Chocolate Frogs, partly because she didn't know the girl well enough to know what else to get her, and partly because she found it ironically amusing; Portia, who had probably already had a few Chocolate Frogs too many this holiday season, and was starting to show it.

Emily had gotten each of them a set of Gobstones in a different colour, which Olivia had stuck up her nose at, but Calista had actually been rather grateful for.

She had liked to play against phantom opponents when she was young, and had been rather good at it, as far as one can be while playing against oneself, but over the years she'd lost most of them, and hadn't bothered asking for more since she only played against herself anyway.

Portia, no doubt in an attempt to please Olivia solely, had given each girl a small silver-plated hand-mirror; Calista made the same face at the mirror that Olivia had made at the Gobstones.

Olivia passed her gifts out last. She gave each girl a tiny silver gift bag tied with green-and-gold ribbons. Calista opened hers to find a pair of very pretty silver filigree earrings, and looked up to see that Emily had gotten a similar pair.

She caught sight of a wounded expression on Portia's face, and looked down at her hands. She had an identical beribboned silver bag, but she had pulled a small bottle from hers instead of jewellery.

"It's a Slimming Solution," Olivia announced very loudly, "It's from a very posh health shop Mother fancies. I'm sure it will help you loads, Portia."

There was an awkward silence, during which Portia sniffled an awful lot and tried to pass it off as her usual runny nose, and Olivia tried to catch Calista's eye to share in cruel laughter.

Only, Calista didn't feel much like laughing, because she understood a bit how Portia felt.

Calista didn't even have pierced ears.

She had thought of Olivia as her best friend, and the other girl hadn't even noticed that Calista couldn't w _ear_  earrings.

Emily was busy putting her own earrings on. She tilted her head this way and that, and Olivia smiled and deemed the earrings to suit Emily very nicely.

Calista leapt up and began clearing all the wrappings from the presents, so no one would ask her why she hadn't tried hers on.

In the end, her friends had almost been right: the holidays might still seem long with no one to keep her company, but she was actually glad to see them go that afternoon.

**o-o-o-o**

The next day, Calista was entirely consumed with her father's Christmas present. There was a lot of planning and preparation involved with it, and in the end she'd had to nick a few things from around the school, too.

She was so absorbed, in fact, in thinking about his gift that she hadn't noticed when Severus had come over to where she was sitting in the Great Hall, eating lunch, until he tapped her shoulder lightly.

Calista looked up, a guilty look spreading over her features automatically; just as quickly as it appeared, she had schooled it away. She hoped he hadn't seen it.

Severus eyed her a moment before he spoke, which led her to believe that he  _had_  noticed her expression, and was wondering what had caused it. At any rate, if he did notice, he decided not to ask her about it.

"I'm going to be experimenting with a new potion this afternoon," he said, and then glanced at the nearly-empty Slytherin table. "You can come and watch, if you'd like."

It was a touching throwback to the days when they'd both lived in his Professors' quarters at Hogwarts and she had been a shadow by his side in his workroom, sometimes fetching him ingredients or stirring one thing for him while he worked on another.

Any other day, Calista would have been thrilled to join him, especially since all of the other students that she was actually somewhat friendly with were gone; but she had a lot of preparation to do for his gift, still.

"Uhm," she said, grasping at the first excuse that came to her mind, "I have a lot of homework. Transfiguration."

"Ah," he said, "I suppose the potion can wait, if you still need me to help you."

Calista nearly cursed under her breath. She had forgotten that she'd already asked him for help in Transfiguration. Luckily, she was an extremely good liar when she needed to be, a skill she was just as likely to have inherited from him as from her mother.

"Actually, I finally figured it out. I just need time to finish up the essay part. And I have Charms homework, too."

She added this last part for good measure, and realized a fraction of a second too late that he had probably already heard from Professor Flitwick himself that the Charms teacher had let them go without homework over the break.

Severus didn't say anything about it, though, if he knew.

"I see," he said curtly, "Good luck, then."

He was gone before Calista even realized that she'd sounded as if she was just looking for excuses not to spend time with him.

Which she was. Just for entirely different reasons than he thought. And now she was doubly shafted, because she still  _did_  need help with Transfiguration.

Cursing herself, Calista finished her lunch in record time and then raced back to the deserted Slytherin common room. At the very least, she had better make this worth it.

She worked through the afternoon and evening, and midnight found her creeping through the dungeons, engaged in absolutely last-minute preparations.

Twice, she heard shuffling in the corridors and dreaded finding Mrs. Norris, Argus Filch's old scruffy cat, around the next corner, but both times it turned out to be mice.

It was probably the first time in her life that she was relieved to have heard rodents.

**o-o-o-o**

Christmas Day dawned cold and clear, and when it did, Calista was very nearly asleep in one of the two kitchen chairs in her father's quarters.

She shook herself awake. It had been next to impossible to sneak into Severus' quarters in the dead of night; she had only achieved it because she knew which spells he used on the locks, and even so she had very nearly set off one of his alarm spells.

She would never forgive herself if she ruined the whole surprise by falling asleep before she could give it to him.

Calista waited, allowing her father to sleep what she judged to be perhaps an hour past dawn, but was really only a quarter of an hour at best.

When she couldn't stand waiting anymore, she waved her wand over the kitchen table, revealing what she had earlier hidden there, and tiptoed towards the doorway to his room.

She knew better than to wake him up suddenly (he'd probably think he was under attack and curse first, asking questions later) so she tapped very lightly on the door, and waited a moment.

Hearing nothing from within, she tapped again, and waited. The third time, she heard him stirring, and grinned to herself – a rare expression – with anticipation. She couldn't wait to see how he reacted.

When she was sure that he was awake or close to it, Calista called through the door, softly.

"Father?"

There was a brief silence, and then:

"Calista? Are you all right?"

He sounded rather tired himself, as if he had been up the entire night too, but then again, she  _had_  just woken him from a sound sleep.

"Yes, I'm fine. I just want – Can you come look at something for me?"

"Calista it's –," there was a pause during which he must have been checking the clock in his bedroom, "six-thirty in the morning."

"Yes, I know," she said simply, and she heard him muttering, heard rustling of the bedclothes as he rose. She stepped back from the door, retreating into his study to wait for him.

Severus emerged from his room a moment later, remarkably clear-eyed. It was quite dark in the dungeons no matter what time of day it was, so he lit his wand.

"Calista, what—," he stopped short at the sight that greeted him.

The hallway was lined with Christmas garlands and holly boughs. Red and green and gold ribbons were tied into pretty bows and stuck onto the walls with a Sticking Charm.

The door to his study was ajar, and he could see light coming from within it. Taking a few steps forward, he pushed the door open. The study was just as laboriously decorated as the halls, with green garlands strung up across the bookshelves.

The light was coming from a Christmas tree in the corner, dotted with dozens of minute blue and white lights that he ascertained to be tiny, contained tongues of witchfire.

Standing in the middle of all this, and looking very proud of herself was Calista. Her eyes were bright, and had a slight darkness around them that indicated a lack of sleep, and her hair was tangled as usual, but her smile was nearly as bright as the lights on the Christmas tree.

A great number of things passed through Severus' mind in that instant, and he chose one of them at random to say:

"How in Merlin's name did you get a Christmas tree into the castle dungeons?"

Calista at least looked slightly contrite when she confessed, "I, uhm, borrowed it from the second level hallway."

Severus took a breath.

"And you… made all the lights?"

Calista nodded, the pride creeping back into her face. It had been an awful lot of difficult Charms work, and it had taken her most of the night.

"There's more," she said, and slipped past him, across the hall and into the kitchen.

When Severus didn't immediately move, his gaze still caught almost hungrily on the Christmas tree, Calista tugged his hand gently and led him into the kitchen.

This room was decorated just as lavishly as the rest of the flat, but there was something else, too.

The little table was piled high with toast and several different jams, bacon, sausage, sugared porridge, and French-style croissants. There were also two cups of tea and two glasses of eggnog.

In place of pride, there was also a tray of biscuits cut into the shapes of Christmas trees and wreaths, and iced with green icing.

Severus' eyes shone in a peculiar manner for a moment, as he surveyed the lavish, festive Christmas morning that he had never seen firsthand in childhood, that Calista had somehow guessed he'd always missed.

"Most of the stuff I nicked from the kitchens," Calista said, unable to contain herself, "But I made the biscuits myself. That's why they're sort of messy-looking."

She'd added the last part as an afterthought, but Severus had barely heard it. He pulled his daughter into a rare embrace, and said two words that made Calista feel that all of her sneaking around and hard work had been worth it.

"Thank you."

After a moment, the embrace grew awkward for both of them, but it didn't really matter anymore. They sat down at the table and ate until they were both very full. Severus didn't actually care for sweets much, but he ate three of the biscuits Calista had made.

It would have been too much to expect that they would laugh and chatter happily over the breakfast table, their cares forgotten, but in their case, perhaps it wasn't necessary. They spoke of her classes and his desire that she take occlumency lessons from him more regularly again, all the usual things.

He asked her about the gifts she had exchanged with her friends (it turned out he  _had_  noticed his owl being used), and she told him what she had given them.

"And I got some stupid mirror from Portia that I'm probably just going to chuck, she obviously only had Olivia in mind when she was shopping, but Emily got us each a new set of Gobstones. And I got some stupid earrings from Olivia," she added in a rush, hoping he wouldn't question her about the latter, "She gave Portia a Slimming Solution though, said it was from some posh shop in London."

As she had intended, he didn't question her about the earrings, but he did comment on Olivia's gift to Portia.

"Why doesn't it surprise me that your friend Miss Avril must resort to buying simple potions at posh shops? If they'd install a shopping district at Hogwarts, I daresay she might pass my class."

Calista laughed darkly at this, which was rather the effect Severus had been aiming for.

"Oh, there is one other thing," Calista said, as they were finishing their breakfast, "I lied yesterday, about Transfiguration. I do still need help with the homework."

Severus held back a rare laugh at the half-guilty, half-hopeful expression that crossed her face.

"I suppose I can make time in my schedule," he said dryly.

After breakfast, Severus presented Calista with her Christmas gifts. He had gotten her a new Potions book, as well as a set of crystal phials to replace her glass ones.

All in all, it was the happiest Christmas Calista had ever had.


	6. Chapter 6

Calista's first Christmas at Hogwarts was very nearly perfect. It was a pity, then, that the night contrasted so starkly.

She had woken in the wee hours of the morning from the dream of running over a field of bones, Bellatrix in her wake.

It had gone exactly like it had before, except that this time, Bellatrix was inexplicably waving a knife at her in an attempt to curse her with it, rather than a wand.

This time, she had actually screamed aloud, and when tears sprang to her eyes, she wrote them off as tears of relief that she was the only one in her dormitory that night.

She threw the covers off her bed, lit the lamps in the room, and stormed around the dormitory, not sure if she was angry at Bellatrix or at herself.

She was miles and years away from Bellatrix, and yet, in Calista's eyes, her mother was still winning, because even in the privacy of her dreams, Bellatrix was the victor over her.

She was ashamed that she had woken up screaming, and doubly so that the dream had caused her to cry. Why should a bloody dream make her cry, when she had so often endured Bellatrix's cruel treatment with nary a tear shed?

She considered, briefly, sneaking down the hall to her father, telling him about her dream. He would be able to tell her if it meant anything, if Bellatrix was trying to reach her somehow.

Except that, as Calista made her restless rounds about the dormitory, she couldn't stop her eyes from filling with tears. As she ruthlessly wiped them away with the back of her hand, she imagined appearing before her father in such a pitiful state, and thought with only a modicum of sarcasm that she'd rather die.

Instead, she threw herself onto the floor next to her bed, and slammed both of her fists on her mattress so hard that they rebounded nearly hard enough to hit her in the face.

"Leave me alone, you stupid bitch," she said, borrowing language she'd heard from classmates. Her voice was thick with tears. "Just leave me alone!"

Reflecting, Calista couldn't say what made her react so strongly on this night; perhaps it  _was_  simply because the prior day had been so categorically perfect; or perhaps this sleepless night was one too many.

It was particularly distressing to the young girl that Bellatrix made her most fearsome appearances in her dreams, a place where she most wanted to be safe.

It would have been a very small comfort to Calista to know that she wasn't the only one in the castle who spent the rest of that night awake and unsettled.

**o-o-o-o**

At the very same moment that Calista woke up screaming, Severus woke with a start as well. At first, he thought that he had heard a scream for help, and threw his covers off, prepared to leap into action.

Then, he realized that he hadn't heard a sound, but rather had felt Calista's distress in his mind.

It was certainly not the first time that he had been disturbed from his slumbers by a mental calling-out from his daughter, but he still had to calm the beating of his heart just the same.

He analysed the feeling in his mind, and there was now only a small hint of Calista, a ripple on the surface of a great lake on a day with the smallest of winds; she was upset, but he didn't think she was in danger.

Ever since the first time Severus had delved wholly into his daughter's mind, and discovered the alarming quantity of disturbing memories within it, he had been somehow linked to her, able to tell when she was deeply afraid.

Since he had never felt or heard of such a bond between two people before, despite his incredibly extensive background in Legilimency and Occlumency, he wasn't certain if their bond was because of their genetic relationship, or their history, or some combination of factors.

He had never entered anyone's mind in as thorough and intimate a manner as he had Calista's, but then again, he had never performed  _Legilimens_  on another person to whom he was related by blood before, so he couldn't say with any certainty what had differentiated their bond.

Whatever the reason, Severus felt that his ability to pick up signals from his daughter's mind without trying was a double-edged sword.

He was alerted whenever she experienced extreme fear; and though he was thankful for the ability in case there was ever an occasion where she was in need of his intervention, the reality was that she was afraid far more often than she actually needed his help, and he was hard-pressed not to run to her in the middle of the night, regardless of the circumstance, and offer his help.

In the early hours of the morning following Christmas of 1987, Severus experienced another instance of the latter circumstance.

He had felt her fear acutely when he was jarred from his slumber, but then she had nearly faded from his consciousness, indicating that she was still upset, but no longer afraid for her life.

In short, Severus ascertained, she had had another nightmare. Part of him understood her desire for privacy, and knew that she would only be resentful if he offered help when the danger was only imaginary.

But part of him wanted to run to the Slytherin dormitories, and pull his young daughter into an embrace, until the fear faded from her mind, and she released her hold on his.

He had gathered from Calista's embarrassment over the subject that her ability to bleed her strongest emotions into his mind was involuntary, and in light of recent events, it alarmed him.

If she had no notion that she was alerting him to her distress, then how could either of them know that she wasn't providing Bellatrix with the same information?

And yet, if she  _was_ , if Calista's desperate, unconscious call of alarm was broadcast indiscriminately to both her parents, then Severus was left in a difficult position, indeed.

His choice wasn't much of one at all: He could allow Calista to continue to alert both of them to her fear, which stood a very real chance of allowing Bellatrix to take a foothold in her mind again, or he could train her to block them both out; which would leave him entirely ignorant if she was ever in a situation where she needed his help, and couldn't reach him by conventional means.

Plagued by these thoughts, Severus resigned himself to being awake, and lit the lamps in his study.

The Christmas tree that Calista had put in the corner was still there, although the witchfire lights had faded several hours ago, since witchfire could only remain lit for a set amount of time without being recharged.

He reached for a text on Legilimancy, although he had already read this particular book several times over in an attempt to understand the link he had developed with Calista, and had unearthed nothing of significance.

He was still aware, at the edges of his consciousness, of Calista's distress, and it unnerved him, since he could do nothing about it.

If he had possessed a finer grasp on the nuances of her emotions, he would have felt that she was considering running to him to confess the details of her darkest nightmares, but he didn't; he knew only  _when_  she was distressed, not why.

In fact, if he  _had_  known that she wanted to run to him for comfort, but was held back for fear that he would judge her harshly because she couldn't stop crying, then virtually nothing would have prevented him from seeking her out and attempting to soothe her nerves.

Inasmuch as an emotional relationship with his daughter was concerned, Severus had taken his cues from her. She had struck him from the beginning as intensely private, and had never responded well to his repeated attempts to understand her. For years, the only times she had allowed any sort of emotional conversation between them was directly after one of her nightmares, and although she was somewhat more open now, there was the constant fear that if he pushed too hard, she'd only shut him out.

She had been understandably resentful when he had seen her darkest memories, and had almost never spoken about them to him; when she did, it was generally in fairly oblique terms, and he had never wanted to push her to disclose anything she was not comfortable with.

As a result, he had found himself in a precarious situation, where he had known the details of the darkest moments of her childhood, but could only guess at how these moments affected her daily life.

It might even have come as a relief to Severus himself to have someone to confide his own fears and secrets in, but Calista was so distant and guarded that he could not envision such a scenario; indeed, in keeping with Calista's evident preferences, he had always kept himself fairly concealed from her emotionally.

When she had come to live with him, Calista had been irrevocably damaged and defensive. Compared with how their relationship had begun, Severus felt that he had made tremendous leeway with her. And yet, she seemed loathe to  _truly_  open herself to him, to reveal her emotions.

He had not, of course, had the most exemplary childhood, and he was almost entirely ignorant in the art of parenting, so it had always seemed natural to follow Calista's lead, to reveal only as much of himself as she would reveal of her own emotions.

And so, when she was closed and distant, he had never pushed, knowing that he would be alerted if she were ever in imminent danger, and priding himself on his resistance to invading the privacy of her mind, even though it would have been easy enough for him to do so.

Sometimes, when he had found Calista to be exceptionally unrelatable, he had forced himself to relive those terrible moments of her childhood, as if his reliving her pain could somehow relieve her of the burden of it, or at least help him to understand why she was often so distant.

Embroiled in empathy for his oft-distant daughter, Severus resigned himself to wakefulness for the remainder of the night.

**o-o-o-o**

When they saw each other again, no mention was made by either how both had lain awake all of Christmas night.

Severus was present in the Great Hall at breakfast the following Monday, and since there was almost nobody at the Slytherin table, he had shafted protocol and simply sat with his daughter.

"How have you been sleeping?" It was a leading question, because Severus already knew the answer; if he had been a bit more finessed in the art of concern, then perhaps he would have opened with something slightly more unassuming.

"Fine," Calista answered automatically, and Severus nodded, although he was plagued by a hidden, inner conflict: Why wouldn't his own daughter gift him with her honesty? Why did he  _always_  have to resort to prying?

"Did you have any strange dreams?"

It was Severus' best attempt at fatherly concern, given that he knew damn well that she'd been awake most of Christmas night following a bad dream; and yet, Calista misread him as simply nosy.

"No."

"Well," he said, admittedly at a loss. He had been so disturbed by her distress the previous night that  _he_  felt he needed to discuss it, and yet Calista was solidly denying that anything had been amiss. Had she suddenly become emotionally infallible, or did she simply mistrust him, event still, after everything they'd gone through?

"What?" Calista asked defensively, perhaps sensing that he knew she was not being truthful.

"Nothing," he said, abandoning his efforts, and then, "Seek me out this afternoon. We're going to take a brief excursion out of the castle. And wear Muggle clothes."

Calista couldn't begin to guess at what he was playing at, so by afternoon her curiosity was piqued. She was dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved top, and carried her winter cloak over her shoulder.

Once they were off the grounds, Severus took hold of Calista's hand and Apparated both of them. They landed behind an old factory building with boarded-up windows. It looked like no one else had been in this particular spot for ages, which led Calista to wonder how Severus had known to land in exactly this spot.

The area was fairly run-down, but after walking a short way, they came to a row of shops.

"What are we doing here?" Calista asked, and then amended, " _Where_  are we, anyway?"

They walked past a used-clothing shop and a window display of mostly broken children's toys before Severus answered.

"I'm sure there was a closer place for this, but this is the only one I know of."

They had stopped walking now, and Severus nodded towards the door of the nearest shop. It was a jewellery store, and a large sign in the window advertised ear piercing.

A slow grin spread over Calista's face. She wasn't much into jewellery, in fact had owned exactly none of it until a few days ago, but she'd always liked how earrings looked on other girls, and now she wouldn't have to explain to Olivia why she wasn't wearing her gift.

Intentional piercing was one of the strange quirks of the wizarding world. It was nearly as common among witches and wizards as it was among Muggles, but they didn't have any businesses of their own that catered to the trend.

Some people used a Puncture Spell to do it, but even with such a mild spell, there was the risk of accidentally injuring someone permanently – a severed earlobe would not grow back.

As a result, most witches and wizards simply went to Muggle shops to get pierced jewellery.

As he had told Calista, Severus knew there were probably a lot of places closer to the castle that she could have gotten her ears pierced at, but he didn't exactly take strolls through Muggle neighbourhoods for fun, so he had taken her here.

If he hadn't been with Calista, there was another stop he would have made, but she was exiting the shop with little silver studs in her earlobes and a grin on her face, so he was out of time.

In that moment, it struck Severus that Calista had no problems showing him  _some_  of her emotions – he had seen both happiness and pride on her face on more than one occasion. Why, then, was she so loathe to let him share in her sadness and fear, too?

**o-o-o-o**

When term started up again, Severus made a decision that Calista would resume weekly Occlumency lessons. He'd held them with her only sporadically since therm had started, but she was acclimated well enough, now, and the lessons were important. She was to report to him on Saturday mornings, although he did concede the days on which Quidditch matches were held.

Now that she had a new set of Gobstones and a willing opponent in Emily Yaxley, Calista spent a lot of time playing, and slightly less time with her nose buried in a book, although Olivia found both pastimes to be distasteful and boring.

Emily was actually very skilled at the game, and just as pleased to have someone to play with as Calista was. She taught Calista several ways to improve her technique, and was probably more talkative when playing the schoolyard game than at any other time.

Calista was still performing below par in Transfiguration, despite her father's help. She was beginning to lag even further behind in class, which caused McGonagall to assign her even more homework, in the hopes that she'd eventually improve.

It was having the opposite effect, though. Calista was so frustrated with the subject that she didn't think she even  _wanted_  to learn it anymore.

She was in the Slytherin common room working on yet another of McGonagall's essays when Olivia sidled over to the chair opposite her at the study table and sat down.

"I'm bored," she complained, taking Calista's essay away from her in one swift motion. She ran her eyes briefly over the parchment, pronounced it boring as well, and tucked in carelessly inside Calista's textbook, closing the cover of the latter.

"You could do the Potions homework," Calista suggested tartly, knowing the other girl hadn't done it and had not intention of doing it.

"What's the point of doing the homework?" Olivia said, "I'll just cheat off you when we have our exams."

She had a nasty gleam in her eye, as if she was daring Calista to refute it.

"What if we aren't sitting next to each other?"

"But we will be. You'll ask your father to seat us together."

Calista laughed. "He already knows I'm helping you, he won't put me next to you at exam time."

Olivia narrowed her eyes.

"How does he know? Did you tell him?"

"No, of course I didn't, but he's not stupid, he can tell—,"

But Olivia wasn't even interested in listening to Calista's response, because something far more interesting to wonder about had entered her mind. A positively impish expression crossed her face.

"So Calista," she said casually, "Where's your mother? How come you never talk about her?"

"What?" Calista was taken aback by the question; she had known it would eventually come, but she hadn't been expecting it just then.

"Your mother," she repeated, in a tone one would use when talking to someone who was quite slow on the uptake, "Is she dead?"

"Yes," Calista answered hastily, reaching for her textbook to conceal her expression.

Olivia eyed her for a moment, and then put her hand over the book, preventing Calista from opening its cover again.

"How did she die?"

"When I was born," Calista replied, trying to pull the book across the table, away from Olivia.

"That's funny," Olivia said, deceptively light, "Considering that a witch hasn't died in childbirth in, oh, a hundred years."

"Let go of my book."

"She was a Muggle, wasn't she, Calista?"

There was a challenge in Olivia's eyes, and Calista could see where this would go; she was trapped, now. If she was to continue the lie that her mother had died when she was born, she'd be unable to convince Olivia that her mother wasn't a Muggle, and she'd be shunned just as badly as Portia; worse, perhaps, because Portia at least was pure-blooded.

Most of the other students in Slytherin didn't put as much importance on blood purity as Olivia did, but Olivia was the ringleader of the first-years, and no matter what her reasons were, if she disliked someone, the other students in the year would follow suit, or at least the girls would.

Calista made a decision.

"No," she said, "I lied. My mother isn't dead. She… she and my father don't get along, and I don't really see her very much."

_At least not while I'm awake_ , she thought bitterly.

"But don't you miss her?"

"No. I don't know. Why do you care?"

Olivia affected a hurt look. "I'm your best friend, Calista. I just want to know about your family. I tell you about mine."

"Well, I don't want to talk about it," Calista said shortly, and gave the textbook a great yank. It slipped out from beneath Olivia's hand, but the essay inside it got rather crumpled around the edges that were sticking out past the pages of the book.

"There's no need to get upset," Olivia said sweetly, as if nothing had happened. Calista didn't miss the malice beneath the tone, though.

She knew Olivia wasn't going to let it drop.

**o-o-o-o**

They were on the way back to the common room after Potions class when it happened.

Olivia was livid because Professor Snape had made her change seats with Percy Weasley halfway into class, just because he had seen her handing her ingredients off to Calista to be prepared.

She had failed the the assignment, because she had added her armadillo bile at the wrong time, and the mixture had turned black as night and congealed into a solid mass.

She was fuming, and not paying attention to where she was going, and she ran smack into a first-year Hufflepuff girl, sending both of their schoolbooks and potions kit flying all over the corridor.

The Hufflepuff girl had gotten down on the floor with Olivia, helping her pick up the mess.

"Looks like one of your phials shattered," the girl commented, lifting a piece of it, "I would've thought they'd do something to it to make it unbreakable, you know? I mean, with everything else that magic can do, why not? I s'pose it's so you'll have to keep buying new ones."

Olivia ignored her, picking individual porcupine quills up off the floor.

"I'm still getting used to all this, mind you – the magic and stuff," the Hufflepuff girl chattered on, "My parents are both Muggles, and they couldn't believe it when we found out about me, that I'm a witch. Did you always know?"

Olivia snatched up the last of her fallen ingredients, and sneered at the other girl.

"Of course I did. I'm not a Mudblood like you."

The girl only looked slightly wounded, perhaps more at Olivia's tone than her words, since she didn't seem to understand the significance of the term.

One of the girl's housemates had approached behind Olivia though, and evidently he  _did_  know the severity of the insult, because he leapt to her defence.

"You cow," he said to Olivia, "I'm going to tell the Headmaster what you said."

Olivia laughed rudely.

"Oh you are, are you? Calista's the best student in our year, and she'll hex you if you get me into trouble. You want to be walking around with boils for the rest of the year?"

The boy paled, and looked to Calista, as if for confirmation of the threat.

Calista had, until that point, had absolutely no intention of getting involved in the incident, but it looked as though Olivia wasn't going to give her a choice.

Only, before the incident had happened, Olivia had been ranting at Calista, as if it were her fault that she had moved across the room in Potions, had even been accusing her of getting caught chopping and grinding Olivia's ingredients  _on purpose_  so that Olivia would fail the class.

Calista didn't like cheating for Olivia; she took pride in her own work, and was always irritated when Olivia received credit for it, and it wasn't only in Potions. She copied her essays for Charms and History of Magic, too, and yet never offered to help Calista in Transfiguration, which was the one class that Olivia truly excelled in.

She was tired of Olivia always getting her own way.

"You started it, Olivia. I'm not going to hex anyone for you over this."

Both Hufflepuffs looked relieved, and took off before she could change her mind.

When Calista looked back at Olivia's face, she knew her decision to stand up to her had been a mistake for which she'd pay dearly.

"You. How dare you refuse to back me up, after everything I've done for you."

"What?" Calista nearly choked, she was so shocked by Olivia's words. "After all you've done for  _me_? You're the one that copies all of my homework."

"I befriended you," Olivia said, "Even though you're just as much of an ugly little misfit as Portia is. I invited you to watch Quidditch practice, even though no one really wanted you there."

Calista had heard enough, and turned her back, so that Olivia wouldn't see how deeply her words had hurt.

But Olivia wasn't finished. The rage of her humiliation in Potions class, and again in front of the two Hufflepuff students, coupled with the threat of being reported to the Headmaster, had sufficiently loosed the rein she had on her vicious tongue.

"Everyone thinks you're weird, because you're always reading some daft book and you never want to talk to anyone. And you know what else, Calista?"

Calista paused, bracing herself. Something told her that the worst was yet to come.

"You don't fool me for a minute. I know the real reason you took that wretched little Mudblood's side is because of your mother. She was too a Muggle, wasn't she?"

Calista turned around at this, provoked into a furious rage that Olivia would bring her mother into this. Of course, Olivia didn't know the truth, but there was one way to change that.

"You're right, I did lie to you," Calista said, her face full of fury despite her best efforts to control her expression, "But my mother's not a Muggle. She's not even dead. She's in Azkaban, for torturing a couple of Aurors until they completely lost it. Don't worry, though – her blood is probably purer than yours."

The declaration made, Calista instantly wished she could take it back, but it was too late. Instead, she just took off at a run down the corridor, and completely missed the look of utter shock on Olivia's pretty face.

**o-o-o-o**

Olivia was better than her word. Without her friendship, Calista lost the friendships of the other girls, too.

Portia was suddenly Olivia's favourite, inexplicably. It appeared that whatever she had done to cross Olivia in the first place was forgiven in light of Calista's more recent betrayal.

Emily wouldn't play Gobstones with her anymore, because the first time she had after the incident, Olivia had crumpled up bits of parchment and thrown them at Emily until she'd given up and left Calista alone.

Olivia had not been outwardly hostile to Calista, though. It was more that she was pretending she didn't even exist, and though she would resort to bullying the other girls for associating with her, she never directly attacked her.

In fact, if anything, Olivia had been acting like she was  _afraid_  of Calista, ever since she had learned the truth about her mother.

It struck Calista as highly ironic that a girl who made such a show about disliking Muggles and Muggle-borns and wanting to hex them would find Calista's being related to someone who  _did_  hex and torture them so unpalatable.

Without anyone to talk to, and without a Gobstones opponent, Calista spent nearly all of her time as she had before ever starting at Hogwarts; with her nose in a book, as Olivia had described it.

Mealtimes became unbearable for Calista, because she didn't have a book to hide behind. No one in her own year was speaking to her, and they wouldn't let her sit in her usual spot beside them.

When she had tried to sit with them, they had spent the whole meal discussing the various reasons why they didn't like her, as if she wasn't there. Olivia was nearly always the instigator, but it was ironically Portia that was often the cruelest.

When Olivia commented loudly that she couldn't stand people who didn't properly comb their hair, a few of the second-years nearby had sniggered, and then Portia had said that the reason Calista did so well in class was because the teachers graded her on a different scale, since she was so ugly they must have thought she was the first actual troll to attend Hogwarts.

For Calista, it was just like being back at the wretched orphanage with the Muggle girls who had picked on her mercilessly. She started sitting at the opposite end of the table at dinner, next to some fifth years.

They didn't really want to sit next to a first year, and the boys made this obvious by having very crass conversations in very loud voices. By three weeks into her exclusion from Olivia's crowd, she knew far more about the anatomy of the fifth-year Slytherin boys than she could ever want to.

Between Olivia and Portia harping on her about her appearance whilst simultaneously pretending she wasn't there, and the fifth-year boys having extremely rude conversations over her head, Calista began to feel like she was invisible.

Even Potions class was miserable, because Olivia kept stealing her ingredients when Professor Snape's back was turned, and then glaring at Calista as if daring her to snitch.

It got so bad that she considered moving her things across the room to sit with the Gryffindors, but by that point her constant mistreatment of Percy had gotten her a bad reputation with them, and they were no warmer to her than the members of her own house were.

Her father must have been aware, at least on some level, that Calista was feuding with her housemates, but he didn't really see much of a problem in that, since it meant that no one was cheating off of her in class anymore.

He assumed, in fact, that this was the root of the dispute, and when he had seen Calista sitting with the fifth-years at dinner, he believed that she had simply found students to talk to that were closer to her level academically.

He even dared to hope that they'd be able to help her bring up her Transfiguration marks, which were still slipping, even though he'd been trying to help her improve them.

If he had had any notion of what the fifth-year boys were  _really_  discussing in front of Calista, he would have been positively apoplectic, and might have understood how badly Calista's exclusion among the first-years had affected her, that she would choose their crude behaviour over humiliation at the hands of her former friends.

**o-o-o-o**

_She was running again, jagged bones stabbing her feet as she ran. She felt Bellatrix gaining on her, turned to look – and she had a knife, again._

_She waved her knife, and Calista was shot through with pain, as if it had been a wand and Bellatrix had uttered the incantation for the Cruciatus Curse._

_Calista forced herself to keep running, but her legs were slowing; she was tired, she couldn't run anymore._

_Hands were pulling at her again from beneath. She fell down, was face-to-face with a disembodied skull._

_It started to speak, and Calista tried to scream but found that she had no voice._

' _Your mother murdered me,' the skull rasped, its jawbone clicking, 'She murdered me, and now you have to pay for it.'_


	7. Chapter 7

They were supposed to be turning a pencil into a ruler. After much frustration, Calista still had a pencil, albeit one with hatch marks every millimetre.

McGonagall was making her rounds in the classroom. She paused to hold up Emily's ruler as a splendid example, while Olivia looked put out that hers hadn't been chosen.

When she made her way over to Calista, McGonagall shook her head.

"I don't understand how you can do so well in every class but mine, Miss Snape. Professor Flitwick is always trying to tell me you're a brilliant student, and yet you can't even manage a simple Transfiguration. Why is that?"

Calista flushed. "I don't know."

"Here," McGonagall set a fresh pencil on the table before her. "Show me what you're doing."

Feeling her face heat up, and knowing that most of the class had stopped working to watch the scene, Calista wished that she  _was_ better at Transfiguration; maybe then she could use a Vanishing Spell on herself.

Calista concentrated, and waved her wand at the pencil. Nothing happened for a moment, and then black marks appeared along one side of the pencil, just like the first one she had tried to transfigure.

"You're thinking about it too hard," McGonagall said, "Instead of trying to think of all the things that differentiate the pencil from the ruler, just think of what they have in common."

McGonagall moved on, leaving Calista to attempt the transfiguration several more times. She got the exact same result twice, and her best attempt for the class period was a flat, ruler-shaped length of wood that had no measurement marks. It did, however, have a rubber on the end of it.

When class ended, McGonagall looked rather disappointed at what Calista had produced.

"Very well then, Miss Snape, if that's the best you can do. Perhaps you should review your notes."

"Yeah, I'll do that," Calista said, anxious to leave class before Olivia did, knowing the other girl would probably say something snide if they left together.

She had already reviewed her notes several times over, and had read all of the first-year chapters in her textbook at least three times, but it hadn't done much good.

She almost collided with Portia in her rush to leave the classroom.

"Watch where you're going – or can't you see around your nose?" she sneered.

"Oh, you're so clever, Portia," Calista shot back, "Did you think of that all by yourself, or did Olivia tell you what to say?"

"Have fun in first-year Transfiguration again next year, Calista!" Olivia called over her shoulder, as she took hold of Portia's elbow and steered her away, presumably towards the Quidditch pitch to watch the team practise.

Livid, Calista made her lonely way to the Slytherin common room. She sat down and resigned herself to going over the Transfiguration text yet again.

She felt uneasy beneath the gaze of the skulls that lined the common room. She had never really paid them any mind before, but in light of the most recent instalment of her nightmare, they were suddenly decidedly creepy.

She swept around the room, picking pillows up off of armchairs, and stuffing them in front of the skulls that she could reach.

She sat down to work again, and was still taking notes from the text on anything that she thought might help her improve her class performance, hours later when Olivia and her cronies swept into the common room.

Calista did her best to pretend they weren't there, but then Olivia noticed the cushions in front of the skulls.

"Aw, did ickle Calista get scared?"

She hadn't been the only student in the common room during the time that the three girls had been gone, and wondered how Olivia knew that she had put them there. Or was it just a guess?

Calista bent further over her schoolwork, determined for once not to rise to Olivia's bait.

"She's afraid of the dark too," Portia volunteered, "The other night, I heard her wake up, and then she went to the common room and lit all the lamps."

That would have been the night she had dreamt of the talking skull. She hadn't known anyone else was awake.

Calista ignored her, ignored the temptation to ask how she had managed to hear anything over her own constant sniffling, because she knew if she said anything to either of the girls, she was going to lose it.

Olivia laughed.

"I'm not surprised. Come on, Portia, I want to try something with your hair."

Of course, Calista thought to herself, Olivia couldn't have a friend without trying to change her into another version of herself.

She noticed something strange, though. When Portia made to follow Olivia, Emily sat down at a study table instead – and she set three lengths of parchment down on the table along with her book and quill.

So that's why Olivia wasn't missing Calista's friendship; she had found someone else to do her homework for her. Even Calista had never actually written Olivia's homework up for her, she'd only let the other girl copy.

The incident had nearly blown over, when Marcus Flint and the rest of the Quidditch team entered the common room.

They were laughing and jeering each other over something that had happened on the pitch, and then Marcus looked at Olivia and smiled.

And that was all it took.

Olivia was full of contradictions; she had boasted about her pureblood pride, but was frightened of Calista because her mother had acted on her pride. She always said that Marcus Flint was daft, and yet she always seemed to be trying to catch his eye.

Until this point, she had never done more than jeer at Calista, or exclude her. But something happened when she caught Marcus' eye, and she thought she had the chance to impress him.

Olivia snatched one of the pillows from in front of the skulls and threw it square at Calista's head.

Calista, seeing an object hurtling at her from the edges of her vision, but not knowing what it was yet, involuntarily started, and began clawing at whatever had been thrown at her. When she saw that it was only a pillow, her face flushed.

Olivia and Portia enjoyed a great laugh over this, and a few of the Quidditch team members sniggered, too.

Then Olivia and Portia swept past, on their way to the dormitories. As she passed, Portia grabbed a handful of Calista's hair and yanked on it, hard.

Calista didn't think. Her wand was in her pocket, and when Portia pulled on her hair, she whipped it out and performed the first hex that came into her mind, covering Portia's pudgy face with boils.

Portia shrieked, and put her hands to her face; then she saw that her hands were covered too.

"What did you do to me?" she screeched, and everyone in the common room was looking at them. A few people laughed.

Calista kept her wand pointed at Portia, but her hand was shaking.

"Don't you  _ever_  touch me again, Portia MacNair, or I swear I'll do worse."

"I'm telling Snape!" Portia cried, making a blind dash for the exit of the common room, "And if he won't punish you then I'll go right to the Headmaster next!"

Calista thought that Portia was overreacting, and judging by the way Marcus Flint was sniggering, she wasn't the only one.

However, now that her heartbeat was returning to a normal rate, worry began to set in. Portia might think that Snape would be lenient in disciplining her because of their relationship, but Calista was fairly certain he would lean the opposite way.

She was about to find out, at any rate.

**o-o-o-o**

Severus was correcting papers in his office when someone started battering at his door. He distinctly heard someone crying, and leapt up, opening the door to see a very ugly first-year girl.

"S-she  _hexed_  me!" the girl cried, sounding as though she had just been through a far more severe trauma than suffering a Furnunculus spell, "It  _hurts._ "

It took him a moment to recognise Portia with all the boils on her face, but when he did, he took a vial of boil-cure potion off a shelf and handed it to her. The girl was blubbering so much that she had a hard time getting the stopper out, so Severus had to take the vial from her, pull the stopper out, and then give it back.

After a few moments, Portia's face and hands returned to normal, and she handed the vial back to him. She wiped the back of her hand across her nose as she sniffed loudly, trying to stop crying.

"Who hexed you?" Severus asked, when the girl's sobs had subsided.

"C-Calista did, sir. She hexed me for no reason at all."

Severus was surprised to hear who the culprit was, but he had observed enough of the new dynamic between the Slytherin girls to doubt that the attack had truly been unprovoked.

"Did anyone else see the attack?"

Portia flushed, perhaps picking up on the fact that he didn't quite believe her.

"Yeah," she said, "Olivia Avril was there. And…"

She had been about to name Emily and the Quidditch players, but then it occurred to her that one of them might volunteer that Portia had pulled Calista's hair before Calista hexed her. Calista would still be in trouble, but Portia might be, too.

"And?" Severus prompted.

"And… ah, no one. Just Olivia."

"I see," he said, "Return to your dormitory, and kindly send Calista and Miss Avril to my office when you get there."

Portia nodded, and left his office, heading in the general direction of the Slytherin quarters.

Olivia arrived in his office before Calista did, so Severus took the opportunity to question her.

"You saw the attack on Miss MacNair?" he asked, watching her face.

Olivia nodded. "It was completely unprovoked, sir. We were all just working on our homework, when Calista got angry at something and hexed Portia. I think it was  _Furnunculus_."

She was lying. He could see it in her face, the way her eyes darted around when she spoke.

"Very well," he said, just as Calista had entered the office, her shoulders hunched. "You may go, Miss Avril."

Olivia smiled politely at him, and turned her back. On the way past, she flashed a smirk at Calista, but Calista's gaze was squarely on the floor.

"Calista," Severus said, sounding a bit tired, "What happened?"

"Portia pulled my hair and I hexed her," she said shortly, almost defiantly, as if she was already resigned to being punished for it and simply wanted to get it over with.

He had known there must have been more to the story than he had gotten from the other two girls.

"You know full well that you are not allowed to hex your classmates."

"I know," she conceded, looking up slightly.

"I know you were provoked, but nevertheless, that kind of behaviour cannot be excused."

"I know," Calista repeated, "And I know you have to give me detention or something. But if she ever touches me again, I'm going to do something worse to her than give her boils."

She said it plainly, and Severus knew she meant it. He also could not condone it.

"No," he said, "If she touches you again, then you come to me and I will punish her accordingly. Then it will be she who gets a detention, instead of you. Which you will serve, by the way, Friday after class."

"It's kind of ironic, isn't it?" Calista said after a spell, "That you're the first teacher to give me a detention."

"It is surprising," Severus admitted, "Especially given that I hear you're quite cheeky in Charms class."

Calista flushed slightly.

"Incidentally," he said, "You probably could successfully use a Tickling Charm to fight a vampire, if you ever found yourself in that dubious situation."

Calista bit back a grin.

"Perhaps I should write an essay about it for Professor Flitwick."

"Perhaps," he said, and then looked at her a bit sternly. "Now, go back to your dormitory, and try not to hex anyone else."

**o-o-o-o**

Damn it. She kept reaching out, but it was only into emptiness. There was nothing.

She ran her fingers through her matted, greasy hair, until they caught on knots and stopped. Then she pulled at the knots ferociously, howling in frustration.

Bellatrix redoubled her efforts, concentrating on that night, the night that she had forged a special connection with her daughter.

She envisioned it clearly, the beautiful silver of the blade, the creamy-pale canvas of the child's skin.

When she made the first cut, the girl screamed and tried to break free, but Bellatrix held her in place by magic. She would be in pain now, but some day the girl would come to see that this was for a greater good.

She would be one of His now, just like her mother was.

Bellatrix had been fascinated by the beads of blood that rose up, stark against the white of her skin. This blood was her Daughter's blood, and by extension, it was her own blood, too.

Each incision would bring Daughter, and Bellatrix, one step closer to the Dark Lord.

Surely he would see, then, would understand that even though he had not fathered the child, she was  _his_. She could only grow up to be an extraordinary witch, given her parentage, an excellent addition to the Dark Lord's side.

Or, if Voldemort was impatient, he could use her as a freely given sacrifice, to improve his power. Blood magic was a powerful thing, a beautiful thing, that Bellatrix had always wanted to see.

It was so hard to find a willing sacrifice, and a subject under the Imperius curse wasn't the same; the blood would never be as magically rich, as deliciously potent.

The fact that it was a form of Blood magic that had caused the Dark Lord's apparent downfall was an irony that wasn't lost on Bellatrix.

If only she could have arranged to have that sort of power on the Dark Lord's side. Next time, she vowed she would.

She only needed to reach him, first. A feat that was easier said than done, as she languished in her cell.

She had almost managed it before, to take control of Daughter, her extension. Then that damn half-blooded fool had taken the prize from her, had even stolen her plans on how to use the girl to help the Dark Lord.

She needed to get into the girl's mind again, needed to brush away thoroughly the rubbish that was her own consciousness, the bundle of fear and hesitation. She had not wanted to do what Bellatrix had asked, so Bellatrix needed to force her.

She blamed her cousin, for stealing the girl and ferreting her away. If she had only had more  _time_  with her, she would have broken her, would have made her come to see the way things had to be.

She still could do it, if she could only find her again.

It was only a matter of time, of course. Bellatrix smiled to herself when she was reminded of it. The girl was Marked; she would not be able to hide for long.

**o-o-o-o**

Calista moaned in her sleep, reaching blindly for her wand. She had to defend herself, before –

Before what?

Calista jolted awake, breathing hard. She had been having a nightmare  _again_ , but this time she had woken up for a different reason.

There was a sharp, stabbing pain right in the middle of her back.

She slipped out of bed, one hand curled around her wand and the other pressing against her spine.

She let go of her back and grabbed the little hand-mirror that Portia had given her for Christmas out of the drawer of her bedside table, still half in its wrappings, and carried it out to the common room.

She lit the lamp nearest her, refraining from lighting them all in the hopes that she could avoid having any of the others wake up.

Huddled in the corner, her back still radiating pain, Calista pushed her nightshirt up, angling the mirror and twisting her neck to an unlikely angle so she could see her back.

The marks were there, raised and white, difficult to see against her pallor, but still undeniable.

She had felt them and seen them before, but she couldn't remember them hurting, at least not this badly.

What she had  _not_  noticed before was the shape that they formed, and it glared at her now from within the neat frame of the circular mirror.

It was – oh, no. It was a skull with a snake coming out of it, very similar to the tattoo she had seen on her mother's forearm often enough to memorize.

She concentrated on trying to remember how the scars had gotten there, but it was no use. She didn't remember, didn't even really remember being aware of them any earlier than the previous summer, when she had seen them in a mirror on the back of her wardrobe door.

But they were old scars, obviously as healed as they would ever be, and she must have had them for a lot longer than she could  _remember_  having them.

Had Bellatrix somehow done this to her while she was inside of her mind last year?

It was a terrifying prospect, one that made Calista shiver from head to toe. If Bellatrix could harm her on the  _outside_  when she was  _inside_ , and Bellatrix had already proved that she could reach Calista from the confines of Azkaban, then there was no part of Calista that was safe from her mother's torture, even now – not her body, and certainly not her mind.

She hadn't felt Bellatrix in her mind since her father had forced her out of it, but what if her attack was simply more subtle now? After all, Calista couldn't remember Bellatrix giving her the scars, and yet they were there. Maybe she hadn't felt that attack, either, until it was too late.

Calista slumped into the corner of the common room, and pulled her legs to her chest. She abandoned the mirror on the floor next to her, but kept one hand clutched tightly on her wand.

Then she dropped her face to her knees, and started to cry. She didn't make a sound, but her entire body shook and bucked with the force of the sobs.

Would she ever feel safe? The answer was, she thought miserably, not while Bellatrix lived.

That moment was perhaps the first one where Calista truly realised what the implications of her position were. As she saw it, she would have to murder Bellatrix, or she could never live in peace.

Getting past the idea that she would someday have to kill someone would be hard enough; but she was only eleven years old, and she had no idea when or how Bellatrix would strike at her again. How on earth was she supposed to defend herself against a grown woman, who was one of the Dark Lord's most trusted agents?


	8. Chapter 8

Calista had known that her father was going to give her a detention, from the moment that Portia had gone running to his office to snitch on her.

What she hadn't known was that he would actually make her sort a huge shipment of pickled eyeballs by species, without using any magic to help her.

"This is really disgusting," she complained at one point, when she had accidentally squashed one between her fingers.

Severus glanced up from where he was correcting essays at his desk – homework, in fact from Calista's own class, which had just ended an hour ago.

"Is it? Then perhaps you will think twice about hexing your classmates next time."

"How much longer do I have to do this?"

Severus didn't even look up from the essay he was marking. "Until you are finished."

"Are you having me on? There are thousands of them – I'll be at it until  _dawn_."

"Well then, what a lucky thing for us that you don't have any other classes this afternoon that might interrupt your progress."

"And to think, Portia was worried you might favour me and let me go unpunished." Calista grumbled half-heartedly.

He glanced up at that.

"I might have considered it, if you hadn't announced so brazenly that you'd do it again."

"I didn't," Calista deadpanned, "I said I'd do worse."

Severus arched his brows. "I'm expecting a shipment of flobberworms next week. Shall I write you in to sort those, too?

"Why?" Calista challenged, "It's not going to change anything. I'm not just going to sit there and let her pull my hair, or throw things at me, or whatever she and Olivia want to do next. I've been through that once already, thanks, and I'm done."

Severus couldn't quite stop his temper from rising along with Calista's. He set his marking quill down on the desk, across the stack of essays, and his eyes bored into hers.

"You are not a law unto yourself, Calista," he said, as evenly as he could manage, "You need to stop using your anger as an excuse to flout the rules whenever it suits you. And, furthermore – it might interest you to know that I do  _not_  savour arguing with you every single time I tell you something."

"You don't understand," she accused, but Severus didn't even let her finish.

"No,  _you_  don't understand," he interrupted, "You seem to think that you can unleash your anger anytime, on anyone, and not suffer the consequences. I have been far too lenient with you, but it appears that your friends have not been."

"Portia's not my friend," she said, carelessly tossing a handful of toads' eyeballs in with newts' eyes. "She never was. I don't have any friends."

"That's rubbish," he said, "You're quarrelling with them, fine. But I've seen you sitting with Boyle and Quinn and the other fifth-years."

"Yeah," she said, wretchedly, and he noticed that her hands were shaking, causing her to squash another eyeball by mistake, "Because I got tired of listening to Portia and Olivia talk about how ugly I am and how much they hate me."

Severus exhaled.

"I still expect you to serve your detention," he said, "But you can put those down for a minute if you need to talk."

Calista shook her head, and kept sorting. "Don't worry. I won't ruin any more of them."

"Has it occurred to you that it's you I'm concerned about, and not the state of those bloody eyeballs?"

Calista glanced at him sidelong. "You wouldn't understand anyway."

"I wouldn't?" he said, so softly that Calista barely heard him over the squelching noises her work was making. "Try me."

"It just doesn't make sense," she said, "How someone can say they're your best friend one minute, and in the next they act like you're a pile of dung."

How, indeed. Severus didn't have an explanation for Calista, any more than he had ever been able to explain it to himself.

"You can't concern yourself too much with the way that other people see you," he said, in a deceptively offhand manner, "As long as you know who you are and what you stand for, that's what counts."

Calista dropped two more eyes into smaller bins.

"Yeah? And what if I don't know what I stand for?"

Severus smirked reflectively. "You're eleven years old. You don't need to know that yet – and I strongly suspect that the first time you do decide that, it won't be the final word."

Calista contemplated while she sorted another handful of squashy little spheres.

"Right. I'm eleven years old. But no one else in my year has ever seen their mum torture someone and then off them after."

"I think," he said darkly, "You'd be surprised."

**o-o-o-o**

The irony did not escape Severus that of the two people he had ever truly loved in the world, only one of them could be his in any given life.

For, of course, if Lily had returned his love, then he would never have fathered Calista.

They were a very good analogy, really, for the course of his entire life.

Lily was destined to be his Achilles' might-have-been; something truly beautiful and wholly good that he could only have possessed if he had been able to shut down the dark side of his psyche completely.

Almost a perfect foil, Calista was a child born into the darkness, and bred to remain there. It was the darkest part of himself that had led to the circumstances in which he wound up in Bellatrix's bed.

Sometimes, he thought bitterly of the greatest irony of all: That he had lost Lily because he had unwittingly brought evil down upon her, and caused her death; and he had gained Calista because he had rescued  _from_  evil.

Which, he supposed, left him solidly in limbo, precisely where he had been before beginning a brief and powerful descent that would Mark him forever.

The cruellest thing he had to live with was the knowledge that even coming full circle would not bring Lily back from the dead.

**o-o-o-o**

Hexing Portia had done one good thing, at least. Ever since their confrontation, Portia had been very careful not to provoke Calista unless the latter was seriously outnumbered.

Of course, since Calista had exactly zero friends, it was not the rarest of circumstances.

She was still sitting near the fifth-years at mealtimes, who had evidently realised that she wasn't going to go away no matter how perverted their conversations were made. They had switched tactics, and were now openly discussing, in great detail, the horrific effects of spells gone gruesomely wrong.

Calista supposed they meant to frighten her into leaving, but she was already extremely desensitised to such things. On the second night, when the boys were describing a curse that would cause entrails to be ejected forcefully from the body, Calista actually took out her quill and a scrap of parchment and wrote down what they were saying.

The boy sitting directly to Calista's left craned his neck, peering over her shoulder to see what she was writing.

"Aw, is the little first-year going to tattle on us for scaring her?" the boy jeered. It was the first time that any of them had actually spoken to her directly, and Calista was slow in meeting his gaze.

A couple of the other boys chortled, and even one of the girls. They didn't really seem to be expecting an answer, but she decided to give them one anyway.

"I'm not scared," she said, her eyes narrowing, "I just haven't heard of that one before."

"Heard what one before?" another boy, one with shoulder-length blond hair and a face full of spots asked, eyeing her with something between suspicion and contempt.

"The curse. The one that you said caused someone's entrails to fly out of them like –,"she paused, consulting her notes, "—'Like a bat out of hell'.

The first boy guffawed. He was broad and dark-haired, and Calista was fairly certain he was on the Quidditch team. "Yeah, they don't teach you that one in first year."

The rest of the group laughed as if he'd told a brilliant joke.

Calista blanched. "I know that," she said, hunching her shoulders tightly, "They don't teach us the Fiendfyre Curse or the Levicorpus hex either, but I've heard of those."

They weren't laughing anymore; a few of them exchanged looks, and then the lone girl that seemed to be a part of their group snapped her fingers, and smirked.

"You know who she is, right? She's Snape's brat. Bet you anything that's where she learnt the names of those curses."

"Yeah?" the Quidditch player said, looking at Calista again. "That the truth?"

Calista nodded, although she was only agreeing to the first part of the girl's statement.

"So," the spotty-faced blond boy leaned across the table, "Why aren't you sitting with the other first years like a good little girl?"

Her eyes flashed. "I'm not a 'little girl'."

They all laughed again.

"You're a little girl, all right" the older girl said, smirking at Calista, "Although maybe not a good one. S'Matter of fact, I think I'm gonna call you Little Snape. I'm Kimberly Avery, and this here's Ethan Briggs –," she gestured to the blond boy, "And that's Conor Quinn and Peter Boyle."

She indicated the dark-haired likely-Quidditch-player on Calista's left and a ginger-haired slip of a lad on her right, respectively.

"My given name is Calista, not Little," she said, through clenched teeth.

"Sure it is, Little Snape," Peter quipped.

Kimberly had been contemplating the staff table, and now she regarded Calista. "Kind of creepy how much she looks like him, eh?"

"Yeah," Conor said, "You gonna give us extra homework, Little Snape?"

Calista crumpled up the scrap of parchment she'd written her notes about the entrails-expelling curse on, and stood up to leave. She hadn't given up being teased by first-years so she could be teased by fifth-years instead.

"Hey, where are you going, Little Snape?" Kimberly asked, reaching across the table in an attempt to snag Calista's sleeve. She missed, but Calista paused anyway, not sure exactly why she was doing so.

"Here," Ethan said, shoving a plate with a piece of fruit cake on it towards the place Calista had just vacated at the table, "Have your sweet and tell us more of those hexes you learned."

Conor and Peter both moved over a little, obviously making room for Calista to rejoin them. Hardly daring to believe they were serious, she did.

"So," she said, lifting her fork to attack the fruit cake, "There's  _Serpensortia_ …"

**o-o-o-o**

Calista didn't bother to mention to the fifth-years that she hadn't actually ever  _cast_  any of the curses she'd mentioned herself, and mercifully, they didn't ask.

It seemed to be enough that she had heard of them, and hadn't been squeamish when they'd shared their own tales of hexes and jinxes gone bad and magical mishaps in general that were probably meant to shock her.

They had started quizzing her occasionally, tossing out the names of Potions ingredients they were studying, or naming an incantation and asking her what the spell did. Some of the spells Calista knew, and some she didn't – but she was also fairly certain they'd made some of them up.

She knew a lot of the Potions ingredients, although when they asked her to name all the ingredients in a Draught of Living Death, she'd only come up with two of them.

She'd already learned a lot from talking to them – not only the rest of the ingredients list for a Draught of Living Death, but a lot of useful little jinxes and hexes that she hadn't known about.

She'd even almost begun to tolerate the fact that none of them ever used her given name, but always called her "Little Snape," or some variation on it, which the lot of them seemed to feel was the epitome of cleverness.

One day at dinner, while Calista was furiously scribbling a list of jinxes that Kimberly, Conor, Ethan, and Peter were rattling off, someone snatched the list out of her hands.

"What—," Calista began, looking up to meet the gaze of a fifth-year girl in Ravenclaw robes. This one had limp blonde hair and a spotty complexion, was wearing a Prefect badge, and was looking at the group with obvious distaste. She scanned the parchment she'd stolen, and then laughed.

"Really?" she said, but she didn't even look at Calista as she spoke; she seemed to see right over her head, as if she wasn't there at all, and spoke instead to the Slytherin fifth-years.

"What d'you want now, Elyse?" Ethan sounded wary.

"Can't I just check up on my twin brother?" the girl, Elyse, replied. "I can see you're still up to no good."

"That's right," Kimberly interjected, "We are. So why don't you shove off and find something better to do?"

Elyse looked at Kimberly scathingly. "I don't recall asking you anything, Avery."

"And I don't recall inviting you to our table," Kimberly shot back, "So if you'll kindly do us the pleasure of leaving, I'd be most obliged."

Elyse looked over Kimberly's head, at Ethan. "Mum wants to know if you're coming home for Easter break," she said, and cast a withering glance over Ethan's friends again, "I must say I think you could use a change in company."

Ethan tucked his longish hair behind his ears, and Calista noticed the tips of his ears were slowly reddening.

"Er, yeah," he said slowly, "I'm coming home. Kimberly's coming too, to spend the week with us."

His entire face was red now, and Elyse sneered. "You tell her about your little friend yourself. Mum only asked me to find out if  _you_  were coming."

"Come off it, Elyse, Kimberly's never done anything to you…"

"Except turn my twin brother into a rule-breaking  _Slytherin_  who apparently compiles lists of malicious, dangerous spells for fun – and isn't that a first year?" She seemed to have noticed Calista for the first time since snatching the parchment from her.

"Honestly," Elyse said, not giving Ethan a chance to answer, "You should know better than to corrupt a first-year with all this rubbish."

"You've said your bit, now bugger off, you daft cow," Kimberly said.

"I'll speak to your Head of House about that lack of respect for a Prefect," Elyse warned.

Kimberly grinned. "You go ahead and do that."

Elyse crumpled the parchment up and tossed it into Kimberly's lap before storming away.

"I don't understand how you can live with her, mate," Kimberly said to Ethan, while she smoothed out the parchment Elyse had ruined.

"She means well," Ethan managed, the curtain of his hair falling forward to hide his still-red ears again.

"Right," Kimberly sounded anything but convinced, but then her gaze shifted to Calista, and her expression lifted into a smile.

"So, Snapelet," she said brightly, "Mind putting in a good word for me with your dad? If I have to waste an afternoon in a bloody detention instead of studying for my O.W.L. I'll be in bad shape."

"Yeah," Calista said, "Yeah, I can do that."

**o-o-o-o**

Calista's mental defences were quailing. She fought with everything she had to keep her protective barriers in place, but it was no use.

The first of her mental walls was torn down as if it were no more than a curtain of cobwebs. She felt a push against her second barrier, and then it too was wrenched open.

"No," she said aloud, going first red and then white with the strain of trying to control what was happening in her mind.

She felt an attack on the third and final layer of her defence, as ruthless as it had been with the other two.

Drawing on whatever meagre reserves she possessed, she threw absolutely everything she could behind this most important of barriers, her last stronghold in her own mind.

It was no use – she wasn't strong enough. But she  _had_ to keep her secrets, at all costs.

Then, just as suddenly as the assault had begun, it stopped. Calista let out a breath she hadn't even been aware of holding, and reached a tentative tendril of thought beyond her barriers, seeking signs of the intruder.

Too late, she realized she had no reason to be relieved.

The intruder slipped through her final mental barrier as easily as a fish cut through the water of a still pond.

"Layering your defences will do you no good if you cannot  _sustain_  it," Severus said, radiating disapproval. "Let's try again, shall we?"

"Wait," Calista said, closing her eyes and letting out another shaky breath, trying to gather her resolve after it had so neatly been shattered.

"If someone were actually casting  _Legilimens_  on you with the intent to invade your mind, they would not allow you a break to compose yourself," he said, adding silkily: "Of course, they'd hardly need to cast the spell if you showed them your distress as plainly as you just showed me."

"I'm  _trying_ ," Calista snapped, her eyes opening again, "I'm doing the best I can."

"If that's true, then it only illustrates how sorely you need further practise."

Severus could see the irritation and anger flash briefly across his daughter's face, and then her eyes went carefully blank, her expression placid.

"Better," he murmured, lifting his wand. Strictly speaking, he didn't need it to enter Calista's mind, but using it increased his ability, and the stronger the foe Calista learned to defend against, the safer she would be.

Calista placed only two layers of protection this time. The first was brushed aside just as easily as last time, and behind it Calista had allowed some unimportant memories to seep through.

She felt Severus poring over inconsequential things, like the topic of her latest essay in Charms class, the ingredients in the last potion they had done in his class.

Then he approached her second barrier, and Calista braced herself. She had made this one as strong as her second and third barriers combined from her previous attempt.

There was perhaps a ten second pause before he tore it apart.

Calista howled in frustration. "How do you  _do_  that?"

"A combination of factors," Severus said dryly, "Years of experience, a constant pressing need for secrecy, and of course, the fact that you make yourself as easy to read as an open spellbook."

"I do not!"

Severus lifted his wand again, an indication that he wasn't going to give her a rest this time, either. "Yes you do," he said, "Unless you truly expect your attacker to believe that all you have to hide are your homework assignments."

Calista hastily reformed her primary barrier. It was weak, even for her, as her energy was rapidly draining.

She gathered the last dregs of her strength into creating another barrier behind it, and she filled the space in between the two with any memories she could grope for that weren't particularly important.

On a sudden impulse, she added another scene – the recent verbal match between Kimberly Avery and Ethan's sister Elyse. She reversed the roles in the slice of it that she revealed, so that Elyse was the one calling Kimberly a daft cow.

And then she placed a brief scene from one of her nightmares among the rest – just a flash where one could see that Calista was running, but not what she was running from

She felt Severus brush against this memory almost immediately after he had swept aside the curtain of her first layer of defence. He didn't rush past it though; this time, he examined the piece of memory from the dream, looking for clues in it.

It gave Calista precious seconds to enhance the support of her second barrier.

He still broke through it as if it were mere play for him, but when he withdrew from her mind, his expression was somewhat softened.

"That was a bit better," he said, "Now, do you know why it worked better that time?"

"Because I placed something between the barriers that would attract your attention?"

"Ah, not entirely," he answered, "It worked because it was something with real emotion attached to it, which appears genuine; that is to say, if there were enough of those sorts of memory behind your first barrier, then I might not have assumed you were hiding more behind another layer."

"Oh." She waited for him to comment on the false memory she had added, the one where she had made Elyse Briggs look like a troublemaker.

He didn't.

"So," Calista prompted, "What if I created a false memory, too? Couldn't I put anything I wanted, and make the person believe it was true?"

"Like portraying that you were running towards Bellatrix instead of away from her? Yes, you could do that – but it would be difficult, because you'd have to make it fit seamlessly with whatever things are contained within that part of your mind. For example, you can't place a false happy memory into a part of yourself that is seething with anger."

"So it's… it's rather difficult then, isn't it?"

"In a word, yes. But not impossible."

Calista suppressed a grin. It seemed that he hadn't noticed that one of the memories he had viewed  _was_  altered.

Of course, it hadn't been a particularly complex memory. Still, she wished she could tell him what she'd done, because she thought he'd be rather proud of her.

Then again, taking credit for the false memory would also defeat its purpose.

"I see," Calista said, "D'you think we could practise Transfiguration now?"

Severus nodded. "I've had an idea about that," he said, "Tell me one of the assignments you've had trouble with."

"We had to turn a pencil into a ruler," Calista said, recalling one of her least favourite lessons, "I couldn't get any better than a pencil that looked like it had been run over by a herd of hippogriffs."

Severus chuckled, and opened his desk drawer, rooting around a bit.

He placed a pencil on his desk, in front of Calista. "Go on," he said, "Show me."

Calista drew her wand from her pocket, and aimed it at the pencil, practising the spell she had learned in class.

The pencil wiggled, and then sort of flattened, and finally little black marks, each the width of a human hair, appeared on it, marking measurements. It still definitely resembled a pencil, though.

Severus waved his own wand, returning the pencil to its original state.

"Now," he said, placing a ruler on the desk, to the right of the pencil as Calista viewed it, "Try it again."

Calista looked at him blankly, "Why bother?" she said, "There's already a ruler here, why would I need to make a new one out of a pencil?"

"I asked you to try the spell again, not to be a flippant little toad," he said, lacking any real malice.

Calista flashed a scowl, and repeated the spell, with the same results as before.

"Look at the ruler this time, while you're casting on the pencil," Severus commanded.

Calista rolled her eyes, and then aimed her wand at the pencil, repeating the spell. She kept her eyes locked on the ruler.

When she looked back, prepared to issue another sarcastic complaint, her jaw dropped. There were two identical rulers on the desk.

"I did it," Calista said faintly.

"So you did. Between that and your improvements today in Occlumency, I think you've earned your freedom for the rest of the weekend. Run along and eat flies, you tiresome child, before I change my mind."


	9. Chapter 9

"By now you should all be  _experts_  at this spell. I will make the rounds and grade your final product. When I reach you, kindly hand me your essay describing the technical and historical aspects of the spell."

There was a flurry of activity as the students withdrew their pencils-turned-rulers, wands, and homework essays. Professor McGonagall began at the front of the classroom, armed with a length of parchment and a quill, with which she took notes on each student's transfigured pencil.

Calista watched with apprehension as McGonagall frowned over Portia's effort. She craned her neck, but couldn't quite see how well Portia had done in contrast to her own attempt.

She set her own ruler on her desk, and waited anxiously for McGonagall to reach her. When she did, the professor looked impressed – and, Calista noted waspishly, more than a little surprised.

"Well, Miss Snape, I must say, this is a far better effort than I expected from you – in fact, it's nearly flawless. Five points to Slytherin for your marked improvement."

She wasn't sure whether to be proud of herself or ashamed that she had apparently been so abysmal in their previous class practise sessions that McGonagall expected her to fail.

She smirked when she caught sight of Olivia scowling at her.

Once McGonagall had marked everyone's efforts, she returned to the head of the classroom for the lecture, where she announced that they would be practising on live mice next.

Calista groaned inwardly at this news, knowing that the added difficulty of transfiguring a live animal would likely trip her up.

At the end of class, Olivia rushed up to McGonagall as Calista was gathering her things. Calista thought savagely that Olivia was probably going to complain that she hadn't received top marks on this assignment. Transfiguration was her best subject, and it was a sore point whenever any of her classmates did better on an assignment.

Portia and Emily were huddled together whispering in the doorway, and Calista was just shoving past them when she heard McGonagall call her back into the classroom.

"Miss Snape!"

Calista half-turned, looking over her shoulder. McGonagall looked frighteningly angry all of a sudden, her cheeks red and her lips white and pressed together. Beside her, Olivia was gloating for no reason that Calista could discern.

"Come here at once," McGonagall commanded, and Calista adjusted the weight of her schoolbag on her shoulder and slinked to the desk, with the distinct feeling that she was in trouble, though she couldn't imagine for what.

"Miss Avril tells me an alarming story, Miss Snape," the professor said, "She seems to think that you cheated on your homework assignment."

"What—," Calista began, but McGonagall wasn't finished.

"Normally, I wouldn't take such stock in the word of one student against another," she said, "But I must admit that I was surprised in the sudden leap in the quality of your work."

"Hang on," Calista said, feeling heat rise to her face, "Are you saying I'm in trouble because I did  _well_  on my homework?"

Olivia smirked, but quickly coughed and hid her mouth behind her hand when McGonagall cut her a look.

"You are excused, Miss Avril," she said pointedly. Olivia left, deliberately brushing her arm against Calista's bag on the way by, jarring the darker-haired girl slightly.

Calista followed Olivia out with her eyes, wishing that she could fell the other girl with the pure malice she was directing into her gaze.

When she looked back at McGonagall, the professor looked deeply disappointed, as well as angry.

"Did you transfigure your pencil yourself, Miss Snape?" she asked solemnly.

"What? I – yes, of course I did!"

"Miss Avril tells me that you have been quite friendly with a group of older students lately. She says she saw one of them transfigure it for you."

"That's a lie! That is, er, yes, I've been talking to them, but I did my own homework."

"Well," the professor said, "There's one way to determine the truth in that." She reached into her desk, and withdrew a pencil. Calista's heart sank.

McGonagall set the pencil on the desk, and looked at Calista.

"Show me how you did your homework," she said evenly, suddenly looking as though she was hopeful that Calista could prove her wrong.

"Right." Calista withdrew her wand, and pointed it at the pencil. She closed her eyes a few seconds, visualising the ruler she wanted to turn it into.

She whispered the incantation, willing the pencil to obey her for once.

Slowly, it flattened, and developed measurement marks.

It stayed, however, more pencil than ruler, and Calista felt her face drain of colour entirely.

"I see," McGonagall said, looking terribly disappointed. She swept Calista's effort away into her desk drawer, and when she looked up again, she was nearly shaking with anger.

"I do not appreciate being misled," she said, "Twenty points  _from_  Slytherin, Miss Snape, and I will see you in detention on Saturday."

"But—," Calista began, and McGonagall interrupted her again.

"I strongly suggest that you take yourself out of my sight now, and I hope for your own sake that you  _truly_  improve your skills in time for your exams."

**o-o-o-o**

Calista wished she'd just written the truth in her essay for McGonagall's class. Perhaps if she'd just admitted that she couldn't transfigure an object unless she was staring at an example of what it should be transfigured  _into_ , the professor wouldn't have been so livid.

McGonagall hadn't even let her explain, but she supposed it didn't matter much anyway, because she'd probably still be in trouble for not disclosing her method in her essay. She hadn't wanted to admit that she just wasn't any  _good_  at Transfiguration, but now she had to bear the double shame of not being any good, and being considered a cheater.

It had taken every ounce of self-control that Calista possessed not to jinx Olivia the next moment that she laid eyes on her, but Calista thought darkly of her father's threat of sorting flobberworms.

Thinking of her father made Calista's heart sink even further, because she'd have to tell him that she couldn't make their Occlumency lesson on Saturday morning, since she'd be serving McGonagall's detention instead. It made her wonder if she'd  _ever_  have a weekend where she was simply free to do whatever she wished.

Then again, whenever she thought of Bellatrix, whatever-she-wished quickly turned into further defensive lessons, anyway.

Calista spent the next several days avoiding her father to prolong the amount of time she had before she had to tell him she had gotten another detention, and desperately trying to correctly transfigure a pencil  _without_  looking at an instance of the object she was trying to turn it into.

By Friday morning, when the former was inevitable and the latter was proving fruitless, Calista was in a foul temper. She arrived in the dungeon Potions classroom only seconds before the bell signalled the beginning of class, and rolled her eyes when she saw that the only empty seat was next to Portia, and Olivia after her.

Professor Snape announced that they would be brewing a Preservation Potion for use in pickling ingredients for future use. The ingredients list was simple, but the process could be tricky, because specific temperatures needed to be maintained at different stages of brewing.

While she worked, Calista heard hushed whispers being exchanged between Portia and Olivia, and glanced in their direction suspiciously. Olivia noticed, and giggled softly, an action which left Calista distinctly on edge.

She was stirring her own mixture in precise counter-clockwise strokes when she heard another giggle.

"Silence!" Professor Snape called, and Calista used their brief distraction to send a jet of flame flaring up underneath Portia's cauldron.

She knew she shouldn't have done it, but she was still angry about the incident in Transfiguration. She didn't think she could reach Olivia's cauldron without being noticed, and she felt that Portia had been priggish enough to deserve it, too.

Mere seconds later, Portia's cauldron turned muddy-brown and was eliciting a sharp, sour stench. Professor Snape came over to investigate, and Calista had to bite the inside of her cheeks to keep from smirking as he used his wand to clear the contents of Portia's potion and bade her to begin again.

"And this time, you'd do well to pay attention to the contents of your cauldron rather than the conversation of your friends, no matter how enlightening I'm sure it is."

Calista smirked as soon as his back was turned, and Portia cut her a look.

"You heard him," Calista whispered viciously, "Pay attention to your cauldron."

"At least I don't  _cheat_  in Transfiguration," Portia said back, far louder than was necessary. Half the class looked over, including the professor, who had quirked a brow, either in disapproval of the noise or at the accusation Portia had levelled at Calista.

Calista looked steadfastly down at her cauldron, adjusting the flame beneath it. She waited until she no longer felt the eyes of half of her classmates on her to look up and see if her father was still looking in her direction. He was inspecting Oliver Wood's cauldron and denouncing its contents in much the same way he had Portia's sabotaged attempt.

"So," Calista whispered, "I didn't know that having Emily do your homework for you was allowed. It must be though, since you say you don't cheat."

"Liar," Portia hissed back, "You're just jealous because you're failing, Olivia says s—,"

"I do believe I asked for  _silence_ ," Snape said, looking pointedly in their direction. "At least one of you really can't afford to make any further mistakes."

Calista watched her father, but by now he was keeping a close watch on their section of the classroom, and she didn't have the chance to say anything until the bell rang at the end of class.

"So what were you saying earlier, Portia?" Calista affected her best deliberately offhand tone, "Something that Olivia told you? You two sure are close friends these days."

Portia sniffed. "Jealous much, Snape?"

"What reason could I possibly have to be jealous of you?"

"Very funny. You need a list?" Portia tipped her nose into the air and took hold of Olivia's elbow, making for the classroom exit.

Calista wasn't sure what impulse made her call after the pair, despite the very real possibility that her father was still watching her, and she was essentially asking for trouble.

"D'you know she called you 'an ugly little misfit' too, Portia?"

Olivia steered Portia away, glaring over her shoulder at Calista. She didn't care. She had seen the wounded look of betrayal on Portia's face, and knew her comment had caused exactly the reaction she'd been hoping for.

She was still hovering near the classroom doorway, wavering between delaying speaking to her father about her detention the following day or simply getting it over with.  _Why_  couldn't McGonagall have given her a detention any other day? Why Saturday, when she had no choice but to tell her father? None of the other students' parents were informed of every single infraction.

Just as she had decided to slink back to the common room and delay the telling, she heard a swish of robes, a swift step, and then a familiar hand was on her shoulder, steering her out of the classroom, and then a short way down the hall to an office she was very familiar with.

"Professor McGonagall advised me to ask you about your latest Transfiguration assignment," Severus said, "I can't imagine why she wouldn't tell me herself what was amiss, if she deemed it so important, but I shall humour her anyway."

He looked expectantly at his daughter, who hunched her shoulders, clutching her Potions book to her chest.

"She… she thinks I cheated on the homework."

"Ah – and did you?"

" _No_ ," she said forcefully, and then added, speaking quickly, "It's just because I didn't explain in my essay exactly how I did it – and then I couldn't do it again, in front of her, because I didn't have a ruler in front of me to concentrate on, and—,"

" _Enough._  I think I have the gist of it."

Calista sucked in her breath, and then let it all out at once. "Shegavemedetentiononsaturday."

"What?"

"Detention. She gave me detention, for tomorrow."

"I see. Did you tell her that you had other – ah,  _lessons,_ that would interfere?"

Calista tilted her head up to look him in the eye, her shoulders still hunched tightly. "If she'd given me a chance to explain  _anything_ , I probably would've started with the fact that I didn't actually cheat."

"A pity you can't seem to argue with your other teachers as effectively as you always seem to with me," he said dryly, and then realising to whom he was speaking, added, " _Not_  that I am suggesting you try. I can hardly enter the staff room as it is, without hearing about something you've done."

"Or  _haven't_  done, in this case," Calista reminded him, "Because I didn't actually cheat."

Severus gave her a measuring glance. "You also weren't completely honest in your essay, by your own admission. Perhaps this will inspire you to improve you skills by exam time."

"Oh, I'm supposed to do better? Why didn't I ever think of trying that? Oh yeah, I have been trying – and I  _can't_."

"Very well then," Severus said smoothly, "After your detention, and then your Occlumency lesson, we will work on your Transfiguration again."

Calista left his office wondering whether to be frustrated with the workload, or grateful that he was willing to help her.

Severus watched her go, wondering if he had ever been as prickly a child as she was. He suspected he must have been, or he wouldn't have smirked at the thought of Minerva McGonagall having to spend an entire Saturday with the little brat.

**o-o-o-o**

Calista scowled when McGonagall revealed the nature of her detention. She was meant to polish all of the trophies in the trophy room without magic.

She had decided that if McGonagall thought she was so hopeless that she couldn't even do her own homework, she might as well use it to her advantage. For the entire course of her detention, Calista brought every single thing she was polishing to McGonagall's office, to ask her if she was doing it correctly.

By the third trip, the professor looked like she wanted to scream at her student, but Calista adopted such a contrite expression on each visit that McGonagall only repeated, exasperated, that she didn't need to personally inspect every single piece.

After the twentieth or so trip from the trophy room to McGonagall's office, the teacher finally gave up.

"All right, Miss Snape, you may go. I understand you have some extra lessons to attend today."

Calista smirked on the way out, until she remembered that she really  _did_  have extra lessons to attend.

She thought darkly that polishing trophies would probably me more fun than her father's rigorous Occlumency training.

Four hours later, when her mind and body were exhausted from the lessons, and she still hadn't made any progress in Transfiguration, Calista returned to the common room and collapsed in her bed.

**o-o-o-o**

_Calista flew high above a sea of fire, clinging tightly to the handle of a broomstick. She wasn't sure how or why she had wound up there, but she knew that there was something she had to do._

_A flash of silver to her left caught her attention, and she turned her broomstick towards it, her heart dropping into her stomach as the broom obeyed with jerky, jarring movements._

_Another flash, this time to her right. Calista swerved, clinging to the broomstick for her life. Whatever that silvery object was, she knew it was desperately important._

_Beneath her, the fire rose, hotter and fiercer. Calista felt a bead of sweat run down her face, ice cold against the heat of her skin._

_An ember caught the tail of her broom, and Calista shrieked, tilting the handle wildly upward, urging the broom to rise higher._

_It was obeying, but at an agonizingly slow pace. The flames licked at her broom hungrily._

_And then she saw, far below her, in the heart of the deadly fire, a bright, promising flash of silver. It shone like a beacon, beckoning her forward._

_The flames were higher than she was now, and the broom didn't seem to want to rise any higher. She would never outrun the flames now. She had only one option left, only one hope for salvation._

_Trembling so hard she nearly lost her grip on the handle, Calista tipped her broom forward, preparing to dive towards the glimmering silver promise below her._

_Faster, faster, she dove into the searing heat. Her eyes burned and an acrid smoke tore her throat apart. She knew as she fell that she could never survive the heat of the flames._

_She could barely see anything between the fierce bright light of the fire and the tears stinging her eyes._

_Then it was before her, the bright silver light. Calista took one hand off her broomstick, feeling a silent sob being wrenched from her chest as she placed her life in the one hand that remained wrapped, white-knuckled around the handle._

_She stretched her fingers out, felt them brush something. It was a cool mist more than it was an object, but it was a relief on her red-hot fingers. She groped towards it, and felt it growing._

_The silvery fog encapsulated her, blocking out her awareness of the flames._

_And then, suddenly, she was lying on her back, feeling an equally agonizing chill all along her body. Her broom was gone._

_She couldn't see anything, but she felt as though she was lying on a block of ice._

_She blinked rapidly, as if the reason she couldn't see was something that only needed to be cleared from her vision._

_Slowly, she became aware of things just outside of her body. The cold surface she was lying on was a marble floor, veined black and green._

_There were footsteps somewhere to her right. She hoped they belonged to someone that would help her, would tell her where she was and how she had gotten there._

_She felt a cold hand on her forehead, the soft skin and narrow fingers definitely belonging to a woman._

_The hand moved to cup her cheeks, and then a single finger was pressed over her lips, as if she had the energy to cry out anyway._

"There you are"  _a whisper reached her from the same vicinity the hand had come from._ "I've been looking for you."

_Calista intended to suck in a cool breath of air, to open her mouth, but she found that the gentle pressure of the woman's finger over her lips held her quite effectively silent._

"Shh, now. There's no need to call your father just yet. Let's have a chat, just you and I."

_Calista lifted her hand, surprised at the effort it took to do so. It was as if each of her limbs was filled with lead. She brushed at the hand on her face, trying to push it away._

"There's no need to be afraid. We have been apart for so long, pet. I want to show you how I've missed you, and what we can be together."

_The voice was familiar, but the reason it had taken Calista so long to place the voice was because it was carrying a soft, warm tone that she had never heard before. She allowed herself to wonder if it could possibly be true; if her mother was going to apologize to her, to draw her into an embrace and promise never to hurt her again._

_It had never occurred to Calista, before this very instant, that it was a possibility which appealed to her, calling out to the deepest recesses of her heart, where she had never understood why her mother hated her so much. Why she always had to hurt her._

"Come, let us begin again. Everything will be better, this time. I promise."

_Calista saw the room gradually come into focus, saw the curve of her mother's cheek above her, began to be comforted by the light pressure of Bellatrix's finger on her lips. She didn't have to figure out what to say, her mother would say it all for her, would know the words that would take years of torment away._

"Let me show you. Let me show you, how we can change the past."

_Bellatrix leaned closer, a lock of her wild black hair falling softly onto Calista's cheek. She jerked in surprise, not prepared for the way her mother's hair burned her like a brand. Why was her hair so hot, while her skin was so cold?_

_Only, Calista realised belatedly, her mother's skin wasn't so cold anymore. Her lips, beneath Bella's finger, stung as if they had been burned._

_Bellatrix pressed her forehead against her daughter's. Calista felt possessed by the bright silver-grey glare of her mother's gaze, burned by the pressure of their foreheads touching._

"All you need to do is remember,"  _Bellatrix whispered, her lips separated from Calista's only by the span of her own finger._  "Just remember, and then I can do the rest for you, my child."

_Calista felt dizzy, and her head began to hurt badly. She felt blisters rising on her skin wherever her mother was touching her. And then a vision swam into her mind, the wavering image of a knife juxtaposed by the deceptively soft-looking hands of her mother._

_Calista felt as if a great wave was towering over her body, prepared to crash down on her at any second. And she knew, as surely as she had known to follow the silver light to escape the flames earlier, that if the wave broke over her, something terrible would be begun that could not be undone._

_Calista struggled, but she couldn't move anymore. She was so tired, and she knew she couldn't outrun the terrible, terrifying wave anyway._

_She felt Bellatrix's triumph, every bit as sharp as the edge of the knife that was still forcing itself into Calista's inner vision._

_And then, with the greatest effort she had ever expelled, Calista wrenched her eyelids down over her eyes, shutting out the glow of her mother's gaze._

_Within a fraction of an instant, the cold marble of the floor fell away, and Calista felt herself falling. She fell away from the hot press of her mother's forehead and fingers, fell away from the towering wave, and landed with a jarring thump on her own bed, in the Slytherin first-year girls' dormitory._

_Calista opened her mouth, sucked in a great gulp of air, and wondered why, if she had escaped the wave, her face was wet._

Then she realized that she was crying. She hated herself for it, not only because she felt it made her weak, but also because of the reason the tears had come to her eyes.

She had wanted so badly for her mother to be telling the truth when she'd said they could start over, and knowing that her words were empty hurt as badly as if she'd had to suffer her early childhood all over again.

At that moment, being strong and infallible fell to a distant priority. What she needed, more than anything, was simply not to be alone. She slipped out of bed, and through the common room, into the hallway.

As Calista traversed the dungeon corridors, she tried her best to force everything but her destination from her mind. She felt that if she didn't concentrate on simply putting one foot forward at a time, she would collapse into a wretched, trembling heap on the cold stone floor.

She didn't know what she would do once she reached her father's office; she simply knew that she wanted to be somewhere familiar and safe, to know that he was nearby, even if he was sleeping and had no idea that she was just across a narrow corridor from him.

And if her father was surprised to find her in the morning, curled up in his desk chair, then she would cross that bridge when she came to it, hopefully in the relative safety of daylight.

She was almost there when something brushed roughly against her ankles, causing her to stop short and stumble. She lost her balance and landed on the cold floor after all, and then an ear-splitting, howling  _mrrroow_  rent the stillness of the corridor.

She barely had time to register with a sinking heart that she had stumbled right into Argus Filch's dreadful cat, Mrs. Norris, when the man himself materialised in the hallway.

Calista, like all first-years, had by now been regaled with all manner of terrifying stories about the castle's grim caretaker, so that she was properly petrified when he appeared, snarling threats at her.

"Who do we have, Mrs. Norris? Which one of the snot-nosed little brats have you caught out of bed?"

Calista felt herself wrenched upward by a vice-like grip on her arm, and then her face was inches from the caretaker's. She could smell that he had eaten something with onions at dinner, and it made her feel sick to stomach – although maybe that had more to do with the fact that Kimberly Avery had just told her last week that Filch still kept manacles in his office.

Calista tried to yank her arm out of his grip, but he was holding fast. Now that he had discovered her rule-breaking, he wasn't about to let her walk away. He peered into her face, trying to identify her.

"Little thing, aren't you? First-year, I'd reckon – what a  _pity_  I'm not allowed to carry out whippings anymore, the firsties always scream the best."

Calista registered the threat before she registered the fact that he'd said he wasn't allowed to carry it out, and she wished suddenly that she had thought to bring her wand with her – she lashed out physically instead, felt her foot hit something soft, and Filch snarled, tightening his grip on her arm.

"You little  _beast_!" he growled, dragging her along the corridor towards his office, "I'll have you banished from the castle, I will, for assaulting a staff member. Of course the best way to teach you a lesson would be to string you up by your ankles – but Dumbledore's gone  _soft_  on you miserable little—,"

And then a silky, sleep-roughened voice cut neatly across the corridor.

"I can handle it from here, Argus."

The caretaker released her from his iron-like grip, and the joint relief of circulation returning to her arm and being rescued from whatever dreadful fate Filch had planned for her nearly made Calista dizzy.

"Father," Calista said gratefully, not quite realising she was speaking until it had already been done. She didn't care if he gave her a hundred detentions for being out of bed, she was so relieved to see him after the joint terrors of her nightmare and the Hogwarts caretaker.

"Oh, the sneaky little beast is  _yours_ , is she, Severus?" Filch spoke, not quite willing to let his prey alone yet, "She attacked me, you know. Thanks to  _her_ , there will never be a Filch Junior, if you know what I mean – you know what would keep her in line? A good whipping. I still have a decent selection of implements, if you've the stomach for it."

Severus' voice was remarkably calm, as Calista sidled towards him by virtue of moving  _away_  from Filch.

"As generous an offer I'm certain that is, I told you I can handle it from here."

Filch wrung his hands together, glancing down as Mrs. Norris wound herself between his ankles.

"Yes, yes, very well." He glared at Calista, shaking his finger at her. "If I catch you in the corridors in the middle of the night again –,"

" _Enough,_  Argus."

Filch and his cat finally went down another corridor, no doubt to catch some other unfortunate student.

Calista finally allowed herself to look up into her father's face, expecting to see ire written across it.

Instead, as his attention shifted from the retreating caretaker to his daughter's face, he looked concerned.

"Are you all right?"

Calista nodded, but was ashamed to feel hot tears springing to her eyes again. She reached one hand to her face to dash them away, and then she saw her father's hand held out between them, an offer.

Suddenly an image came to her that she hadn't even known she remembered; her father reaching his hand out to her, offering her his help when she was six years old and terrified by her dreams. Back then, she had refused to take it, willing to place her trust in no one but herself.

This time, she took his hand.

He led her down the path she had been intending to take when she snuck out of her bed, towards the perceived safety of his office.

He let go of her hand only once they were in his office, the door closed behind them. He moved a few bottles around on his shelves, and then took a small vial and handed to her. She unstoppered it, and recognised the soapy, relaxing scent of sopophorous beans, and knew it was a sleeping potion.

Calista downed the potion, handing the empty vial back to Severus, who collected it in a small bin on an upper shelf, and then sat down at his desk, shuffling through a sheaf of parchment.

Calista sat in the chair opposite the desk, pulling her feet underneath the hem of her nightdress, curling up as small as she could. She felt the tears on her cheeks drying, and they went unreplenished as she was comforted by the mundane sound of her father sorting papers.

She had never even realised that she found it so comforting, but she had grown very used to sitting in his office over the years as he pored over his students' essays. Somehow, it had always seemed easier to talk to him when one or both of them were busy with a normal, everyday task.

She was lulled into comfort when he lifted a quill and began to mark the top essay, as though this was what he had been planning on doing at two in the morning all along. Only his grey nightshirt and half-askew robes belied the notion, in fact.

As if he had sensed the moment when she began to feel calm and comfortable, he glanced up from marking.

"What were you dreaming about?"

Calista didn't even bother to ask him how he had known why she was out of bed.

"A lot of things," she said quietly, her voice falling flat as it failed to reach the far corners of the stone-walled room, "Fire. Flying on a broomstick that was hexed, or something. And  _her_."

He gave no indication that he had heard her, instead setting quill to parchment again. Calista slowly felt warmth spread throughout her limbs, as if she'd just had a hot drink on a cold night. She loved the sound of the nib scratching across the paper; it was a promise of normalcy, of nights that would turn into mornings, and days that would in turn become restful, dreamless nights.

"At first, I was just flying on a broomstick," she continued, softly enough that she could still make out the scratching of his quill over the sound of her own voice, "But there was… a lot of fire, beneath me. I tried flying away from it, but the broom – it wasn't very good. Or maybe  _I_  wasn't very good. Then I saw… I dunno, really, something silvery, though, and I thought I should catch it."

She closed her eyes briefly, and saw the bright red flash of the fire branded across the insides of her eyelids. The sleeping potion she'd drunk made a weak grab at her, but she wasn't ready yet; she hadn't managed to wipe the images of her nightmare out of the forefront of her mind.

"The fire kept rising, and the broom caught, but then I saw the silver whatever-it-was again, and I dived for it."

She opened her eyes, suppressing a shiver. "Then it was different, and I was lying on something really cold – I guess it was a marble floor. And there was someone there, but at first I didn't know who it was."

Calista slipped off the chair, suddenly unable to keep still. She crossed the small room to a set of shelves which housed many jars of pickled things. The scratching sound of her father's marking-quill paused, and Calista reached for the nearest set of shelves, obsessively straightening and lining up all the jars.

The quill began scratching again.

"She touched my face, and covered my mouth so I couldn't talk. She… she felt cold, and then hot, and then she said a bunch of stuff… about how she was sorry, only she never actually said that, I just sort of felt it. Then she put her face right next to mine, and her eyes were staring into mine, and… and then I knew that she was lying."

Calista moved a jar with something pale and slimy-looking in it, so that it was exactly the same distance from all of its neighbouring jars.

"She… she said I had to remember something, and I started to, but then I felt like… like something really bad was going to happen, if I listened to her anymore. So I closed my eyes, even though it was hard, and she just kind of disappeared."

Calista heard only silence behind her, and turned. Her father was looking at her, his arm holding the quill suspended before him.

"I – It wasn't like my other dreams," Calista whispered, aware that a shiver had traversed her spine, and that her fingers were trembling uncontrollably. "I didn't just see her. I  _felt_  her."

Severus set his quill down slowly, deliberately, and stared at the child with his glittering dark eyes.

"I wanted to believe her," Calista said, almost inaudibly now, "I w – wanted her to be sorry, to say that she really cared about me. I wanted her to be my  _mother_."

Feeling positively wretched now that she had confessed this, Calista put her hands to her face, as if she could stuff the words back into her mouth.

"I know," Severus said quietly, and Calista was surprised to feel his hands come to rest on her shoulders, and even more surprised to notice that it was a more comforting thing, even, than the scratching of his quill had been. She hadn't even heard him rising from his chair. "It hurts, even when you think you've gotten beyond it, that she will never be what she should have been to you."

Calista had a strange but distinct impression that he wasn't really speaking about Bellatrix, not solely.

"I'm sorry I'm such a – a toad all the time," she said suddenly, on impulse, pausing as her face was split by a mighty yawn, "I shouldn't – you don't deserve that, you've always been good to me – I'll try not to be, anymore."

To her surprise, Severus laughed dryly. "If you  _weren't_ , I'm not sure I'd recognise you anymore."

"Yeah," Calista murmured tiredly, feeling her eyelids droop again, and this time lacking the energy or inclination to fight them, "I love you, too."

She didn't hear his sudden indrawn breath, in fact was barely aware of him leading her out of his office and into his quarters, letting her into the room that had been hers before she'd started at Hogwarts and been given a dormitory among the other Slytherins. She climbed into the bed and slipped under the covers autonomously.

Severus left the room, but he waited outside the doorway until he was completely sure that she was under the effects of the potion, would sleep dreamlessly for several hours.

He closed the door to her room, and whispered something inaudible into the solid wood of the door.


	10. Chapter 10

During the Easter break, more of the students remained at the school than had remained for Christmas break, but Calista didn't have the luxury of enjoying the expanded opportunity for company.

Instead, she was summoned to her father's office every single day of the recess, for stretches of four, six, or even eight hours at a time, to suffer Occlumency lessons.

Originally, Calista had enjoyed the subject, but it was a draining and expansive field of study, and the further she progressed, the more difficult it became.

It was unlike the rest of her lessons, because it couldn't be divided into units, and there was no stopping point. True, there were no essays, but it required a mental concentration so great that it drained physical energy from her.

Severus was convinced that Calista's dream had been an instance of Bellatrix trying, and nearly succeeding, to enter Calista's mind again. If Calista had thought him a demanding tutor before that pivotal dream (she had), it was absolutely nothing compared with what he demanded of her in their lessons now that he feared she was under attack again.

She wasn't even certain anymore how to gauge her progress, especially when there were no other students to compare herself against. She felt, at the end of each lesson, that she had progressed from the beginning of it; yet the beginning of the  _next_  lesson almost always made her feel inadequate, because as soon as she had grasped something, Severus pushed her relentlessly onto the next thing.

Calista slowly came to realise that her Occlumency lessons over the summer had been child's play. Before, she had thought that she was at least partially successful at keeping him out of her mind during their lessons; now she saw that he had never really been trying to enter before, must have left her to her privacy deliberately.

It was a gesture she appreciated, belatedly, now that she was faced with the reality of her father's abilities. His skills, as she now saw them, were very nearly immeasurable by Calista's standard.

It was hard to judge for herself whether she was making progress or not, because whether he deemed her attempt pathetic or promising, he was able to sweep aside her protective barriers as if they were completely insubstantial.

He had told her before that he was even better at Occlumency than he was at Legilimency; if this was so, then Calista couldn't even fathom the true level of his skill, because as a Legilimens he was able to overpower her without any discernible effort.

Calista had intended to spend her free time during Easter break researching the spells on the list of jinxes, hexes, and curses that she'd compiled from the fifth-years, but by the third day of the recess, it was clear to her than any allegedly free time she came by would best be put to use by sleeping off her exhaustion from her father's lessons.

In truth, she was surprised that he even allowed her to sleep without a potion that would ensure dreamlessness, because seemingly overnight, he had become obsessively convinced that Bellatrix was trying to attack her again. His second deepest conviction was that Calista was not yet strong enough to defend against her mother. The culmination of these convictions led ultimately to Calista's newly gruelling schedule.

For her part, the young girl did understand the grounds for her father's concern; she too believed that her mother was attacking her again, but faced with the prospect of having to learn an extraordinary skill in precisely no time, she felt hopeless.

Still, she hadn't had any dreams to speak of since the night she'd been caught out of bed by Filch, and she knew that each night that passed uneventfully into the next day was another opportunity for her to hone her feeble skills, in the hopes that she would be prepared for Bellatrix's eventual onslaught.

**o-o-o-o**

Severus knew that he was demanding an awful lot from Calista, but it was a calculated sacrifice he was extracting, and he fervently hoped it was one that would prove fruitful.

When it became clear that Bellatrix was a lot closer than he had previously thought to making a connection with Calista again, he had cursed himself for not insisting on a more rigorous schedule of defence lessons before. He had hoped (foolishly, he now thought) that he could allow her the luxury of some semblance of a childhood first.

In order to facilitate her training, he had taken a gamble on her reaction to his unleashing the true extent of his ability on her mind. He had reasoned that a child of her age with her traumatic experiences was likely to respond in one of two ways to a Legilimens of his calibre. Either she would shut down completely and retreat into the recesses of her own mind, hoping that the intruder would leave her sanity intact when he was finished, or she would read his intrusion as a challenge, and place everything she had into fighting back.

He knew better than anyone that Calista was fiercely stubborn, and proud enough to continue to fight someone against whom she had no real chance of winning. It was in this regard that he knew he was walking a fine line, because there was a possibility that, in making himself enough of a threat to inspire her to work her hardest to learn to fight him, he would lose her trust. It was the reason he had so carefully protected her privacy before, but he wasn't certain that there was still enough time to train her using the gentler approach, and that  _wasn't_  an issue he was willing to gamble on.

Severus knew that he was pushing Calista harder than was probably fair, knew that she shouldn't really be expected to hold up against this kind of rigorous training for very long. And yet, so far, she  _was._ She was exhausted almost to an unreasonable level by the end of each session, but so far she had kept returning the next day to try again.

Severus was determined to push Calista to her utmost limits, in part because he knew that Bellatrix would do her best to get beyond those same limits, and – admittedly – in part because he wanted to see precisely what those limits were. He wanted to know, both as her protector and as the man who had fathered her, what she was actually capable of.

There was another aspect to the rigorousness of their lessons as well, one that was a benefit all in itself. With Calista so exhausted at the end of every day, and retiring from six or eight hours of keeping her mental barrier in place, she fell into a deep, virtually dreamless sleep – and slept with her barriers still unconsciously in place.

There were several mental states which made someone more susceptible to intrusion. Dreaming, intense pain, and painful memories were only a few of the triggers that could lessen one's defences. Bellatrix could hardly inflict physical pain on the child from her cell in Azkaban, and Severus had effectively eliminated the third of those factors when he had entered Calista's mind the previous year and pilfered away the worst of her memories. The combination of exhaustion and vigilance in their Occlumency lessons seemed to be keeping Calista's sleep dreamless, or at least shielded in such a way that it appeared so.

As for Calista's darkest memories, they remained in stoppered vials in Headmaster Dumbledore's office for the time being. In truth, Severus had not anticipated that Bellatrix would try to use Legilimency through Calista's dreams to force her to remember the incident again.

When he considered what might have happened if Bella had succeeded in doing just that, he felt as if an icy fist was gripping his heart. He had rescued Calista from Bellatrix's possession once, and he honestly wasn't sure if either himself or his daughter could persevere through that ordeal again so soon. Furthermore, he had obligations outside of his daughter's protection that stood to be greatly jeopardised if he were forced to oppose Bellatrix twice.

The choice between saving his own daughter's life and fulfilling his obligations to Albus Dumbledore on behalf of Lily Potter's son was not one that he cared to make.

The memories themselves were a cause for concern on Severus' part, because he could often feel Calista's frightened angst when she tried to remember the source of her physical scars and couldn't. However, he remembered with great clarity the horrific details contained in the memories, and he had seen the trauma they'd caused to the girl's young mind.

Since he had liberated them from her mind, she had changed drastically; she had begun to heal from the rest of her mental and emotional scars at a much greater pace, and she had begun to actually connect with others. Before Severus' battle with Bellatrix within the landscape of Calista's mind, the girl had hardly spoken to anyone but himself, had been habitually distant and unapprochable. Now, she engaged in class discussions and had several friends among the other students. Even the fact that she had made enemies with some of the students was an improvement on the child who hadn't even seemed to recognize humanity in the beginning.

Logically, he knew that her memories would have to be returned to her eventually. Emotionally, he wanted to deny that, but to deprive her of them forever would be to send her into battle without knowing the size of the enemy's army. It was another motivator for him to press her still harder to improve her Occlumency skills, because as long as she could hold Bellatrix out of her mind, the battle between them could be indefinitely delayed.

The same part of him that wanted to deny the necessity of ever restoring Calista's memory in full had yet another reason for wanting Calista to become strong enough to successfully oppose Bellatrix. He knew that Bellatrix likely already resented his having fathered Calista, even though he hadn't known that she wasn't employing contraception at the time that they'd conceived the girl. She had made clear enough, during their youth, what she thought of his mixed parentage and his decidedly un-fearsome reputation among the Death Eaters. In hindsight, it became reasonable to assume that Bellatrix had taken assorted lovers with an intention to produce a child. She had always expressed a grudging admiration for his potential, and had only deplored his lack of application.

It would be deliciously ironic if Bellatrix failed in whatever undoubtedly vile plans she had for Calista because of the  _application_  of his skills in the very child that he had unknowingly given her for her twisted malpractices. He was the one who had unwittingly delivered Calista into Bellatrix's mad phantasmagoria, and so it fell to him to equip the child with the skills she would need to wake from it.

**o-o-o-o**

As soon as the Easter break was over, the mood in the castle intensified noticeably as the students prepared for their year-end exams. In between classes, there were hardly any students wandering the hallways, but the common rooms and the library seemed to be constantly full.

Calista grew increasingly frantic as exams drew nearer and she still wasn't able to transfigure anything properly without a reference object to go by. It was as if her brain could only process half of the spell at a time, and her transitions were never complete.

She was grateful for her father's help, but she still couldn't seem to grasp the subject. He kept telling her that she was thinking too much about the technical aspects of the transfiguration instead of the final results. He said her indecision was confusing the spell, and Calista had pretended she knew what he meant by this.

She spent so much time trying in vain to improve her transfiguration results that she rather neglected to study for the rest of her exams until they were only a few days away, at which time she tried to cram as much information into her head as she possibly could, and prayed that she would retain at least some of it.

Adding to her nerves, as usual, were Olivia and Portia's antics. She was particularly on edge because she had absolutely no idea what Olivia's angle was anymore – the other girl had been curiously courteous of late, offering to save Calista a seat at dinner and even lending her a quill in History of Magic when she'd misplaced her own.

Calista was used to Olivia's meanness, and she found she didn't know how to react to her sudden change of heart. At first, she had assumed that Portia had managed to slight Olivia more than Calista had, but the two were still thick as thieves. Olivia and Portia weren't friendly to her, exactly, but they seemed…respectful, oddly. It left Calista with a decidedly uneasy feeling, because now she had no frame of reference to brace herself for whatever attack she knew Olivia must be planning.

She had also assumed that her father would ease up on the Occlumency lessons to allow her time to study for exams; he did not. In addition to her Saturday lessons, which had now been expanded to fill at least four hours, she was expected to sit in Severus' office while he corrected papers on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. While he did at least allow her to work on other homework during that time, he would keep probing her mind at random intervals, testing her ability to hold a barrier up while concentrating on other tasks.

She had ceased trying to gauge the progress of her improvements in Occlumency, and instead concentrated only on forcing herself to retain some semblance of a mental barrier at all times, since she never knew anymore when her father was going to surprise her with an unannounced test of her abilities

Between studying for exams, Occlumency lessons and surprise tests, her level of vigilance in regards to the other Slytherin first-years, and the numerous hexes and jinxes she had to research to keep the older Slytherins interested in her conversation, Calista was thankful to collapse into her bed every night, and slept so deeply that if she had dreams, she could not remember them in the morning. As each exhausting day crawled by, she found it harder and harder to get up in the morning, and twice she overslept and barely made it to class on time.

She fell asleep in Astronomy one night, and was mortified to have been woken by Professor Sinistra, in full view of the rest of the class. She had heard more than one barely concealed snigger at her expense.

Since she didn't care much for Herbology to begin with and it happened to be an early morning class, she was often exceptionally snappish with Professor Sprout. When the professor finally grew exasperated enough to assign Calista to detention, the girl had nearly burst into tears, because she didn't know how she could possibly make time to serve the detention without cutting into her already short sleep schedule.

Of course, crying in public was the absolute last thing that Calista wanted to do, so she'd asked to be excused to the hospital wing, muttering something about a headache and disappearing before the professor could question her further.

As soon as she arrived in the hospital wing, Madame Pomfrey had ushered her into an empty bed.

"You just lie down, dear," she said firmly, and a few moments later she presented Calista with a goblet filled with a sleeping potion – the same one, in fact, that her father had given her on the night that she'd tried to sneak to his office.

"I—I have to get back to class," Calista protested, feeling vaguely unsettled – there was something she was supposed to be doing just now, wasn't there?

"Nonsense," Madame Pomfrey said, pushing the goblet into the young girl's hand. "You need to sleep. It's the pressure of the exams, they work you children far too hard this time of year. It can be so trying, especially on you young ones. Now, just lie back and get a few hours kip, that's a good girl."

Calista allowed herself to be mothered into drinking the potion and was asleep as soon as she lay down.

When she awoke, it was late afternoon. Warm sunlight streaked through the narrow windows at the far end of the chamber, and Calista realised with a sudden jolt of alarm that she must have slept through some of her classes.

"She's awake now," she heard someone whisper from her near left, and then three forms came into view. She hadn't even realised that she had visitors… and once she saw who they were, she wished she didn't.

"Olivia." Calista said flatly, her eyes sliding to Portia's plump form and Emily's slight one behind the ringleader.

"Are you feeling much better, Calista?" Olivia asked, far too kindly.

Calista narrowed her eyes. "What d'you want, Avril?"

Malice flew across Olivia's features so briefly that someone less perceptive than Calista might not have caught it; Calista herself might even have missed it had it not been for her restorative sleep. Almost as soon as it appeared, it was replaced with a stiff, sweet smile.

"I – that is, we – just wanted to see how you were doing. We were worried about you."

"Since when do you care about how I feel?" Calista asked, not bothering to hide the suspicion in her voice.

"That's not a very nice way to treat your friends," Olivia started, and Calista cut her off with a harsh, awkward laugh.

"You're not my friends," she said shortly.

Olivia's nostrils flared briefly, but her wooden smile remained in place. Portia tugged Olivia's elbow. "Let's go, 'Liv," she said, "I don't get why we have to w—,"

Calista saw Olivia's leg twitch, and then Portia winced like she'd been kicked.

"Of course we are," Olivia said easily, "Aren't we, Emily?"

Emily nodded, glancing almost apologetically at Calista.

"I don't trust you," Calista said baldly. Olivia flinched.

"Well," the fair-haired girl said, casting around for something to say, "I took notes for you in Binns' class, on the goblin rebellions, anyway. I'll let you copy them once you're out of here."

Calista smirked suddenly.

"No thanks," she said, "I'm not a cheater, despite what you told McGonagall. I think I know what this is about now, though. You're worried you're going to fail the Potions exam, aren't you?"

"They're notes, Calista, not my whole bloody essay," Olivia said coldly, in a tone that Calista was much more familiar with, "And this has nothing to do with Potions. I'm insulted. I tried to be nice to you, and help you out, and you repay me by being perfectly wretched."

"Yeah," Calista said impassively, "I  _am_  wretched. Now shove off."

"Come on, Calista," Emily spoke up finally, from behind Olivia. "Olivia just wants to make peace, all right? It's not… she's not planning anything, I promise. Let's just get along again, please?"

Before Calista had decided quite how she would answer, Madame Pomfrey bustled over and told the girls they had to leave because they were disturbing the other patients.

"Not you, dear," Madame Pomfrey said, putting her hand on Calista's shoulder as the girl made to leave as well. "I want you to stay the night, just in case. We want to be sure you're not really ill, don't we?"

**o-o-o-o**

Calista never said in so many words that she would forgive Olivia and Portia, or befriend either of them again. She simply tolerated the other girls' attempts to be kind, although she still regarded both with a wary eye. In truth though, she was too exhausted from studying to look the gift horse too closely in the mouth; for the moment, Olivia and Portia simply became another potential complication that Calista didn't have to concern herself with.

Far sooner than she would have liked, exams began. Kimberly, Conor, and the rest of the fifth-years barely spared her a word or a glance as they all undertook their OWL testing, but Calista was swamped enough herself, and didn't really mind.

Calista thought she had done well enough in Herbology and Astronomy. She surprised herself during her Defence Against the Dark Arts exam; she had expected to do well enough, but the subject hadn't stood out for her particularly well during the course of her first year, and she didn't think she'd do any better than average on it. In the end though, when the bell had rung signalling the end of the testing period, Calista had looked up with a dazed feeling, thinking that the hour had only just begun, that the exam couldn't possibly be over yet – and when she looked down against at her parchment, and then glanced across the aisle at a few of the other students, she saw that she'd filled the page with paragraph upon paragraph describing spells that weren't even in the curriculum for her year, and had written at least twice as much as anyone else.

She felt pleased after the first few days of testing, particularly given the amount she had found to write for her DADA exam. She hadn't realised that all those discussions with the fifth-years had sunk into her mind as well as they had, and it had made up for her lack of formal studying in the area.

It was Transfiguration she was dreading though, and with good reason. The exam was a practical one, and consisted of turning a mouse into a snuffbox. Not only did Calista's snuffbox have whiskers in the end, but it still had a  _tail_.

Discouraged after her poor performance in Transfiguration, Calista had been listless and inattentive for the first portion of her Charms exam. She supposed part of it had to do with weariness, but she knew part of it was that her self-confidence had been effectively shot. Towards the second half of the exam, she picked herself up and managed to perform a very neat Flame-Freezing charm. At the last minute, she changed the colour of the flames from blue to pink as well, hoping that the added complication to the spell would earn her back some of the points that she'd undoubtedly lost with her less-than-exemplary dancing pineapple. She hoped Professor Flitwick hadn't noticed that she'd only managed to make it walk in circles for the first thirty seconds of the charm.

By Friday, Calista was both disheartened and exhausted again, but the Potions essay was one she could have written in her sleep by that point, and although she wasn't the first to finish her Forgetfulness Potion, she was the first one to complete it  _correctly_ , so that was well enough.

She had been half expecting her father to give her an exam on Occlumency too, but mercifully he didn't, unless another random swipe at her barrier during dinner on Friday counted.

When she felt him brushing at her barrier, after a week of demanding exams, she couldn't help but feel quite snappish.

_Sod off_ , she growled mentally at him. When she glanced up at the staff table, she could have sworn she saw his mouth twitching rather as if he were trying not to laugh.

Calista allowed herself a tiny smile, too. She could afford to; her blasted exams were finally over, and it was almost time for the summer break.

**o-o-o-o**

It was strange to be packing up her belongings to be going somewhere other than Hogwarts. After all, Calista had only lived in the South London flat with her father for one summer; before that, she had spent quite literally the better part of her childhood in the castle. It didn't feel like she was going home so much as it felt like she was going on holiday somewhere for the summer.

Calista's grey cat, Yellow, wound herself around the ankles of all of the girls in the dormitory as they packed up their things, purring in a manner that was somehow more demanding than complacent. The cat seemed to be as confused by the activity as Calista herself felt.

"I'll write to all of you this summer," Olivia promised, and Calista toyed for a moment with the idea of telling Olivia not to bother, but when she was honest with herself, she was rather tired of arguing all the time with the other girls in her year.

"Me too," Portia echoed, ever the follower. Calista smirked into Yellow's fur under cover of kissing the cat's forehead.

All too soon, the girls were standing amidst a sea of other students in the Great Hall, saying their final goodbyes for the school year.

On the Hogwarts Express, Calista chose the company of her fifth-year friends over her roommates. They might never get around to calling her by her given name, but at least she had a vague idea of where she stood with them, and she felt it was preferable to be a younger-sibling-like hanger-on to Kimberly and her friends than to try to traverse the conversational minefield that Olivia Avril always seemed to be at the centre of.

"Don't you have friends in your own year, Ickle Snapey?" Peter Boyle, the ginger-haired lad asked her when she entered their compartment but Kimberly had waved his concerns away.

"She's all right," the older girl had said, "We're not going to see her for the whole summer. Don't you want one last chance to corrupt her young mind?" Kimberly grinned, straightening her shoulders so far that they curved backwards, in a poor imitation of her rival, Elyse Briggs.

"Speaking of Elyse," Conor had piped up, "You staying with Ethan's kin again this summer?"

Kimberly had glanced at Calista, and then nodded. "So who's up for a game of Exploding Snap?"

Calista raised her eyebrows at the sudden change of topic, but knew better than to say anything, especially once Peter cut her a warning glance.

After the train had pulled into King's Cross and the students had poured out like prisoners being freed from Azkaban, Emily had pulled Calista aside, just before Calista met up with her father on the platform. Severus didn't take the train, although Calista wasn't sure exactly how he did get to and from the school.

"Calista," Emily said quietly, once they were away from the rest of the students. "I wanted to invite you to come and spend part of the summer holiday with me. Mum doesn't much approve of Olivia, so I couldn't ask when she was around, but…" the slight girl smiled shyly, "I figured maybe we could play a few games of Gobstones this summer. I don't want to get rusty."

Calista blinked in surprise, and then allowed herself a small smile "What – really? Er, yes, of course – I mean, I'll have to ask Father, but I'm sure it will be all right."

"Do you have a minute to meet my mother?"

Calista glanced over to where Severus was waiting for her. He didn't appear to be in a particular hurry, so Calista agreed, and followed Emily to a similarly built, brown-haired woman in a very smart outfit.

"Mum," Emily squeaked, as the woman pulled her into an embrace, "Er, this is my friend I told you about. Calista Snape."

Emily's mother released her hold on Emily, and smiled to Calista. "Hello, dear. It's so nice to meet one of Emily's friends. You'll come and stay with us this summer, won't you?"

"Uhm," Calista said, "I have to ask Father, but I… I think I can."

She felt a sudden, light pressure on her shoulder, and then her father was standing behind her. "Ah – Hello, Ferada," Severus said, inclining his head slightly in Emily's mother's direction. "I trust you are well."

"Well, it's certainly been awhile since I've seen you, Severus," the woman said, "Although I heard from my Emily here that you were teaching at the school. And you have a daughter in Emily's year." Her voice lifted at the end of this sentence, even though it was not a question. She sounded surprised, Calista thought.

Severus nodded curtly, a clear indication that he had no further comment on that particular matter. "Emily is a decent performer in my class," he said, and Calista had the distinct impression that he was trying to change the subject.

She was still considering whether or not her feelings were hurt by her father's obvious hesitance to discuss her with Emily's mother, whom Calista had not even known until this instant was acquainted with her father, when Emily's mother – Ferada – spoke again.

"Well, I was just informing Calista here that she's welcome to come and visit Emily over the summer," she said, "Provided that's fine with you, of course."

Severus nodded again, not quite so shortly. "I'm certain something can be arranged," he said.

"I'll write you," Emily promised, and Calista nodded slowly, still feeling slightly displaced by the twin revelations that Emily  _wanted_  to see her over the summer, and that her own father appeared to be at least fairly friendly with Emily's mother, and she had never known it.

As Calista and Severus left the station, Calista found herself filled with the distinct feeling that her summer was likely to turn out a whole lot better than she'd anticipated it would even a fortnight ago.

"I'll carry your luggage to the Floo Station," Severus said darkly, "if you'll carry that wretched cat."


	11. Chapter 11

"Okay," Calista said, around a mouthful of toast, "We haffa –," she swallowed. "We have to set some boundaries if you're going to keep surprise-testing me. Last time you caught me when I had a mouthful of juice and I almost choked on it.  _And_ ," she continued sourly, "If you surprise me when I'm in the loo or something I'm going to go spare."

Severus lifted his eyes to regard her over the rim of his coffee mug. Their jet depths were impassive as always, and the rest of his face was obscured by the cup.

"What if Bellatrix surprises you while you're – using the lavatory?" he asked delicately.

"I guess I'll bloody have kittens," she retorted, borrowing language from her new fifth-year friends. She winced when what she could see of his expression narrowed into a glare.

"Kindly keep your language at least moderately respectful in my presence." Severus set his mug down on the table, and closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them again, he set his right arm flat across the table in front of him, and regarded her levelly. "It should set your mind at ease to know that I can tell which room you're in before I even attempt to breach your mind."

Calista stopped her hand halfway to her mouth, a corner of toast dangling precariously from it. "That's a bit creepy. Can you do that with everyone?"

"No. Nor can I tell which part of the castle you are in at Hogwarts, unless you're particularly distressed. I don't understand why it bothers you. When we're both in the flat, I could likely tell where you were simply by listening to your footfalls for a moment."

Calista rolled her eyes. "What if I don't want you to know where I am?"

"Then it's probably even more imperative that I do," he said dryly.

Calista grinned, although Severus couldn't begin to guess why. The truth was, she didn't  _really_  mind her father keeping a fairly close watch on her, at least not when she wasn't doing anything she shouldn't be. Bellatrix had, for the most part, ignored her whenever she wasn't actively tormenting her, and although she'd never admit it, she secretly rather enjoyed the knowledge that someone cared enough about her to ensure she was staying out of trouble.

"So," she said, tilting her head as she nibbled her last piece of toast, "How do you know Emily Yaxley's mother, anyway?"

Severus considered his daughter for a long moment, during which Calista thought he wasn't going to answer her at all.

"I suppose," he finally said, "I know her in the same way that your mother knew her."

Calista coughed, and sprayed the table with chunks of toast. "She was a  _Death Eater_?" she finally choked out.

He regarded her coolly. "Not everyone that was in Slytherin House during my time at school became a Death Eater, Calista."

"Then," Calista coughed again, in an attempt to dislodge toast crumbs from her windpipe, "Why'd you say it like that? What was I supposed to think?"

"Emily's mother was never a Death Eater, to my knowledge" Severus continued, "But there are people in her family that were."

Calista recalled suddenly a comment her father had made, once.  _You'd be surprised_ , he'd told her, when she'd made the declaration that none of her classmates had ever seen their parents commit murder.

"Emily's not like that, though," Calista said slowly, "Not as much as Olivia, anyway."

"She may not be. You of all people should know that one doesn't always have to be a direct reflection of one's parentage."

Calista blinked several times, screwing her face up in an expression of confusion.

"But I am," she said, "I'm a lot like you, or at least I try to be." After a second of further thought, her mouth twisted into a pouting sort of frown. "Although I'm obviously not as good at Occlumency."

Severus was hit by several responses at once, and wasn't even quite sure which one he was going to say until the words were out of his mouth already.

"That's not what I meant – and why would you  _try_  to be like me?"

Calista's brow furrowed. "Why wouldn't I?"

Severus looked at her fathomlessly. "I'm sarcastic, rude, and critical of others, simply to begin a list," he said, not certain if he understood her angle on this sudden turn of the conversation.

"Yeah," she agreed, "Like I said, why wouldn't I want to be like you?'

Gods help him, the child was serious. Severus did the only thing he could do – he laughed.

"Perhaps you do take after me. A sufficiently frightening prospect, I'm sure."

Calista smiled brightly, an expression that frankly suited her features better than her customary scowl. "Anyway," she said, "There's all that stuff, I guess, but you're obviously brilliant, and you're the only one I've ever seen stand up to  _her_."

"Well," he replied, trying hard not to smirk at her assessment of him – it was about damn time  _someone_  recognised his positive character traits – "It seems to me that you've done an admirable job of the latter. And…"

Calista hunched her shoulders, but continued to meet his gaze. "Not really," she muttered, and Severus chose to ignore her, and continue with what he had been about to say.

"For what it's worth, you're a better Occlumens now than I was when I was your age."

Calista's shoulders relaxed, but her neck stretched into an exclamation point. "What – I am? Really?"

"Yes, well, I didn't have anyone teaching me," he said, finding himself falling just short of the ability to prevent his own pride from eclipsing his desire to empower his daughter.

Calista either didn't notice or didn't care. She cocked her head and smirked. "Am I better at Potions than you were when you were twelve?"

"Hardly," he said, "Sorry to disappoint you." He stood and began clearing the table of the remnants of their breakfast, directing plates to the sink with his wand.

"I'm not disappointed," she said, a mischievous glint lighting her dark eyes, "It just means I have to try harder."

"An excellent philosophy," he said, "Although I can't say I'm confident it will do you any good." He turned away, hiding his smile under pretence of checking the sink.

"We'll see – Argh, would you  _stop doing that?_ I'm supposed to be on holiday from lessons, you know!"

**o-o-o-o**

_Dear Calista,_

_How is your summer so far? Mine has been dreadfully boring – I'd hoped to travel abroad for most of it, Switzerland or some place like that, but Mother says she's far too busy at work to get away. I did tell you that Mother works for the Ministry, didn't I? She's got quite an important place there, but of course I shouldn't go on about it._

_Speaking of my mother, she asked me to invite you to visit over the summer. I told her you must be dreadfully busy and likely won't have the time, but she insisted that I extend the invitation._

_Do enjoy your summer. I expect I'll see you again when term resumes._

_Most Sincerely,_

_Olivia C. Avril_

_Dear Calista,_

_How's your summer been? Is your father making you do homework the whole time? I hope you get to have some fun, anyway. I've been to Diagon Alley a few times to get ice cream, but I haven't done much of anything else._

_I know you're probably wondering why I didn't talk to you much while you were quarreling with Olivia. You know how she can be, though. I didn't want her to treat me badly for being friendly with you, but I guess she wants to be your friend again, so I can too. I'm glad, because I missed playing Gobstones with you._

_I hope you can come over and stay for a bit. Portia's coming next week, and Mum said she'll write to your father to ask permission for you to come as well. Please don't tell Olivia you're coming, because I'm not allowed to invite her. Mum doesn't really approve of her._

_Bring your Gobstones set when you come. See you soon!_

_-Emily_

_Hey Snapelet –_

_Got another one for your list. Expulso – the Exploding Spell. I used it a few days ago on a turkey Ethan's mum cooked and Elyse is still cleaning stuffing out of her ears. You didn't learn it from me, though, if anyone asks._

_\- Kimberly Avery_

**o-o-o-o**

"I expect you to remain vigilant, to keep practising the guarding of your mind. If you think Bellatrix is trying to contact you again, send me an owl straightaway. And whatever you do,  _do not_  mention that I've told you anything about her relatives' involvement with the Dark Arts, and especially not with the Death Eaters – I shouldn't even have told you –,"

"I  _know_ ," Calista interrupted him, setting her travelling bag down with a muffled  _thud_. "I'm not stupid, I know enough not to say anything about that."

"Well," Severus said, not sounding entirely satisfied, "What about the rest of what I said? Don't let your guard down just because you know I won't be testing you. If Bellatrix should try to contact you again, you must notify me  _immediately_."

"I  _know_ , Father," Calista repeated, "I will. Can I go now?"

"I suppose. Are you certain you don't want me to go with you to the train station? It's quite a walk to carry that bag all the way."

"You could just Apparate me to Emily's house," she said hopefully, hoisting the bag back up on her shoulder with an exaggerated grimace.

"Nice try, but no."

"What about the Floo network? Can't I take that?"

"Not by yourself. It's too dangerous, you could get off at the wrong grate and I'd have no idea where to find you."

"I could get off at the wrong train station, too," she argued half-heartedly, "And then I'd be lost and terrified among all those Muggles and none of them would help me."

"That's an excellent point," Severus said smoothly, "In that case, I suppose I'd better take the train with you to her house, to make sure you arrive safely."

"Ugh, no," Calista groaned, "Emily's family would think I'm an ickle baby if you did that."

"How is my taking the train with you any different from my Apparating you?"

Calista rolled her eyes. "Firstly, of course they know I can't Apparate by myself, so I'd need you to take me. Secondly, it just so happens," she said haughtily, "That the immense embarrassment I would suffer if you Apparated me is worth the convenience of not having to sit in a smelly old train with a bunch of Muggles."

"And you have now answered your own question," he said, placing a hand on her free shoulder, "You're obviously not accustomed to sharing the world with Muggles and you're not going to have a choice about doing so. The earlier you manage to learn to tolerate it, the easier life will be for you."

"You sound so  _professor-y_ ," Calista said scathingly, although Severus decided to take it as a compliment.

He shifted his hand from her shoulder to cup her chin briefly. "Be careful," he said, "Ask Ferada to get me on the fire if you need me."

He saw a smooth transition behind her eyes as a retort came to her and she bit it back. Instead, she half-smiled at him and touched the elbow of his still-outstretched arm, as affectionate a gesture as he was likely to get from her during daylight hours.

"Try not to miss me  _too_  much," she said, and he felt there was more behind her words than her light tone implied, "And don't forget to feed Yellow. I know you've been tempted not to."

Then she turned and left, closing the door behind her, and as if on cue, Severus heard a plaintive  _mew_  from the general vicinity of the air behind his ankles.

"Shut it, you," he said darkly, glancing down at the inaptly named cat, "Or I'll feed you  _to_  something."

**o-o-o-o-o**

When Calista got off the train at Kings' Cross Station, she spotted Emily and her mother waiting on the platform for her – and it was a good thing, because even as it was, she was nearly swept away among the teeming, harried crowds. For a few brief seconds, before she spotted her friend, Calista wished that she had allowed her father to accompany her.

"Calista!" she faintly heard, and then through a break in the crowd she saw Emily waving frantically at her. Her mother stood behind her, and as Calista pushed through the crowd to meet them, Emily's features spread into a smile.

The three jostled their way off the platform, and Emily assaulted Calista with a barrage of chatter that caught her completely off-balance; Emily had never come across as particularly loquacious, and yet she was hardly letting Calista get a word in edgewise just now.

"Mum says we can go to Diagon Alley this week for ice cream – Have you been to Florean Fortescue's? I'm sure you have, of course, but it's my favourite place. I'm so glad you could come, Calista."

When she finally paused for breath, Calista interjected. "Where's Portia? I thought you said she was coming, too."

"Oh…uhm, well, something came up, and she isn't coming. That's all right, though, we can still have fun, just you and I. I've already polished my Gobstones, it helps them roll further. I'm not going to lose, I hope you're prepared for that – you did bring your Gobstones, didn't you?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah. I did." Calista was bewildered by the other girl's apparently sudden chance in personality. Emily had always been quiet and perhaps even a bit shy. Why was she suddenly so giddy?

"Excellent! We can play as soon as we get home – oh, we could set up a tournament. Do you think that would be fun?"

"A tournament?" Calista queried, "With just the two of us?"

Emily blushed. "Well, we could set up rounds, you know. And whoever wins the round gets some sort of advantage in the next round… well, I haven't really thought it all through yet."

"Oh," Calista said shortly, at a loss. She wasn't used to Emily (or anyone, really) chattering so enthusiastically with her. How was she supposed to respond? Was she supposed to act the same way? Was this how friends were supposed to behave with each other outside of school?

"We don't have to do the tournament," Emily said, sounding somehow wounded, "It was just an idea – but we can do whatever you want."

"Oh, the tournament's great, it sounds fun," Calista supplied quickly, sensing that it was important to Emily for some reason. For once in her life, she was the one someone was trying to impress, instead of the other way around. She couldn't quite decide if she liked the supplication or if it annoyed her, but it was different, at least.

Emily continued on in the same vein for several minutes, with Calista offering a few meagre words edgewise, but if Emily noticed that Calista wasn't really holding up her end of the conversation, she didn't say so. For her part, Calista was so intent on following Emily's lively conversation, that she didn't take much stock of their surroundings as they walked, until they slowed and stopped in front of a building.

Emily's mother fished in the pocket of her skirt for a key, and Calista looked up at the building they had come to. It was an old, run-down Victorian terraced house, and when her eyes slid to the left and right of the house, she saw that it was sandwiched in between two very similarly run-down buildings. On the front stair to the building on the right, Calista thought she saw a pile of rags, until it moved and she realised it was a man.

Emily followed Calista's gaze, and suddenly seized her hand and yanked her towards the house. "Come on, let's go inside."

Calista started at the unexpected touch, and forgot about the man on the stairs outside as she concentrated on regulating her heartbeat. She cursed herself inwardly – would she ever stop overreacting whenever someone touched her unexpectedly?

She followed Emily up a creaky stair to the third and topmost level of the building. As they passed a door on the second landing, she could hear a woman screaming from the other side of the door. It was shrill and angry, and was punctuated with a baby's cries. For a reason she didn't completely understand, Calista suddenly felt sick to her stomach.

"Here we are," Emily said nervously, as her mother pushed open the right-hand door at the very top of the stairs.

Entering Emily's flat was like stepping into a world entirely separate from the common halls of the old building and the street outside. The first thing Calista noticed were books. She supposed that the room they had entered into was meant as a sitting room, and after a moment, she did notice two old, worn-looking armchairs stuffed into opposing corners of the room and covered with warm, thick knit blankets.

All four walls of the room were lined with bookshelves, and they were all full. Calista's eyes widened as she took in spellbooks, history books, novels, and almost every sort of book imaginable. There were breaks in the rows of books only for windows and one doorway at the far end of the room, through which Calista glimpsed an oven and the spindly legs of wooden chairs.

Emily surveyed Calista's face expectantly, and seemed pleased (or perhaps relieved) with the expression she read there. "Mum works at Flourish and Blotts'," she explained, "She gets a good discount on books. We've got loads."

"It reminds me of my father's study at Hogwarts," Calista said, her eyes having already caught a collection of books on a lower shelf across the room which appeared to be potions books.

Emily's mother, Ferada, had deposited her keys in a room further along the flat, and came back to stand in the centre of the sitting room – or book room, as it were.

"Welcome, Calista. I'm so pleased that Emily's brought home a friend from school. Make yourself at home, and do let me know if you're hungry or thirsty. Emily will show you where to sleep and put your things, and we'll have dinner in a few hours. Do you need to inform your father that you've made it here all right?"

"No," Calista said slowly, "I think he'd be more interested in hearing if I  _didn't_  make it here all right."

Ferada laughed. "You're a cheeky one, then. Very well, but I'm going to send him a brief owl anyway, to let him know that you've made it and that we're happy to have you. I know I'd be fretful if Emily were away for a week, even if I might not want to let on to her that I was worried."

"Mum!" Emily hissed, "You're embarrassing me. Come on, Calista," she said, reaching for Calista's hand again. She almost dropped her travelling bag, but her reaction to the unexpected touch far much milder the second time. She allowed Emily to lead her through the tiny kitchen and into one of two doorways set in the far wall.

Emily's bedroom was quite small, as long as the kitchen and half as wide. There was room for a single bed and a small chest of drawers whose top surface was crowded with personal effects, and the room's single window had bright yellow curtains. The bed was covered with a thick knit bedspread that reminded Calista of the chair covers in the first room, and there was an array of soft toys on Emily's pillow. All four walls were hung with posters, most of which advertised books.

"I thought we could take turns sleeping on the bed," Emily said, "The floor's hard, but Mum has a bunch more of these bedspreads we can put down to make it softer. My Gran knits them all and sends one to us every few months, and Mum doesn't like to hurt her feelings, so we've got about twenty of them, I reckon."

"I like your room," Calista said awkwardly, and it was true; she had a sense, standing in the tiny space that she was inside a piece of Emily, somehow. By looking at the posters, and the soft toys, and the ribbons and dolls that crowded Emily's room, she felt like she was seeing a representation of her friend.

Her own room at home was perhaps two or three times as large as Emily's, but it was bare in comparison. She had no keepsakes or knitted gifts from family members, and the top of her chest of drawers was empty of anything but dust. She didn't have any soft toys, or really any toys at all. She'd had one soft toy, a cat, but it had gotten lost when they'd moved. Most of her personal belongings were textbooks and potion-making tools and the like, and she kept them in her school trunk at the foot of her bed over the holidays. Thinking about her own room, she suddenly felt as though she were only a ghost of a girl; that if she disappeared one day, there would never be any indication that she had lived at all.

"Thanks," Emily said, disrupting Calista from her reverie, "It's so small, I feel I can hardly breathe in it sometimes – but Mum gets these great posters from work, and I have all my toys from when I was small, so even though it's a tiny space it feels like it's all mine."

Calista nodded, feeling a sudden, inexplicable sense of loss. She set her things down in the corner of Emily's room, using the moment it took to clear her expression. She had progressed so far in Occlumency that she could actually  _feel_  the sadness invading her features, and she forced it down and away, and presented what passed for a smile.

"What shall we do first?" she said, a bit too loudly, but Emily didn't seem to notice.

"Let's play Gobstones," Emily said, "Or – actually, let's draw up the tournament guidelines. We'll figure out how many rounds we should play, and which advantages the winner of each round will earn. I think we should play a different format of the game in each round, so we can find out who's  _really_  a better player all-around." She paused to flash Calista a grin, "Of course it will be me."

"You've been playing a lot longer than I have," Calista grumbled, "You already  _have_  an advantage."

"Maybe, but you're catching on really quick," Emily said, "Here, I'll give you the advantage straightaway in the first round – hang on." She slipped past Calista, passing through the kitchen and rummaging for something in the book room. She returned brandishing a sheet of parchment, a quill, and a large, flattish book. She settled herself on the bed, surrounded by a sea of soft toys, and patted the foot of the bed.

"Come on, sit down and let's draw up the rules."

Calista perched gingerly on the edge of Emily's bed, and peered over as Emily set parchment in her lap, using the book as a writing surface. She watched as Emily printed "Gobstones Summer Tournament Rules" neatly across the top of the parchment.

"In the first round, you'll get two shots on your first turn," Emily said, "To give you a slight advantage. We'll play to first to seven points the first game."

"All right," Calista said, allowing herself to be drawn into the preparations. "We should play part of the tournament outside, so we can play Snake Pit rules."

The girls dedicated the next two hours to drawing up the rules of their thirteen-game Gobstones tournament, and Calista gradually began to relax. By the time Emily's mother poked her head in from the kitchen to tell them that dinner was ready, she was leaning over the parchment and eagerly suggesting amendments to the rules, and had quite forgotten her earlier pang of sadness.

Over dinner in the tiny, cozy kitchen, the girls decided to spread their tournament out over the week that Calista would be staying, so that neither of them tired of it too soon.

"Besides, if we try to play all thirteen games in one day, our knuckles will get sore," Emily pointed out, "And this way, we have something to do each day. We'll play the first round after dinner tonight, and then we'll play one round in the afternoon and one in the evening for the rest of the week. We'll play three rounds the day before you go home, and the final round in the morning before you leave."

Between scheduled tournament games, Emily seemed determined to fill every minute of each day with some other activity. The girls weren't allowed to leave the flat alone, and Ferada was working almost every day that Calista spent there, but Emily had no shortage of games they could play in the flat.

There was one Emily seemed to favour, since they played it at some point every day, where they would determine each others' fortunes using only a book, a scrap of parchment, and a quill. One girl would hold the chosen book and direct the second girl, whose fortune would be told, to choose several numbers. She would the use those numbers to find words in the corresponding chapter, page, and line, which would supply an answer to whatever question they had asked.

"This round, we're going to find out who we'll wed someday," Emily said eagerly on the fourth or fifth day of Calista's visit, pulling a thick history book off the shelf. "The first letter of the first word you choose is his first initial, and the first letter of the second word you choose is the first letter of his surname. I'll go first. Here, you take the book."

Calista furrowed her brow and took the book, wondering why Emily seemed to find this question so intriguing. Calista had never once thought about whom she might marry some day, and now that she was being forced to think about it, she felt her face grow hot. Even though she really couldn't think of anyone she'd ever want to marry, she was distinctly embarrassed by the topic.

"For my first word, I pick chapter seven, page three, line eighteen, and word four," Emily said, closing her eyes as though she were getting some sort of cosmic enlightenment about which numbers to choose, "And for my second word, I pick three, twelve, eleven, and nine."

Calista thumbed through the volume, dutifully finding the word that corresponded to the chapter and line that Emily had chosen. "Probable," Calista announced, and Emily grinned and waved her on. "Now the second word," she instructed.

Calista located the right page again, and then announced the second word. "When."

"That means I'll marry someone whose initials are P.W.", Emily said, smiling. "I wonder if it's someone I've met yet, or some mysterious stranger. I kind of hope it's  _not_  someone at Hogwarts. I don't really like any of the boys in our year."

Calista grinned suddenly, and then broke out into all-out laughter.

"What?" Emily said, defensively, "It's not my fault most of the boys in our class are disgusting."

"P.W., " Calista managed, "Percy Weasley! You're going to marry Percy Weasley!"

"I most certainly am  _not_ ," Emily countered, her cheeks turning pink, "There's more than one P.W. in the world. There's no  _way_  I'm going to marry a Gryffindor, and especially not Percy Weasley."

"Why not?" Calista couldn't resist teasing, "I'm sure you two would make a simply  _adorable_  couple. In fact, I think I'll tell him when we get back to school…"

"You wouldn't," Emily said, sounding a little panicked, and she reached out to grab the book from Calista, "Anyway, before you take the mickey out of me, let's see who  _you're_  going to marry. Pick your numbers."

"Oh, all right, " Calista said, her laughter subsiding. "One, five, eighteen, and two."

Emily flipped the pages. "Many," she said, looking at Calista expectantly for the second set of numbers.

"Uhm… sixteen, three, nine, and five."

Emily located the page, drawing her finger across the proper line. When she stopped her finger, she was still for a moment, and then looked up at Calista with an expectant grin. "For," she announced, "M. F." She paused for effect. "Marcus Flint."

Calista scowled. "This is a stupid game," she said, "I'm not going to marry  _anybody_ , least of all Marcus Flint. He has the mental capacity of a troll."

"The book doesn't lie," Emily teased.

"Right, then I hope you and Percy are blissfully happy together. How many children are you going to have? Nine? Ten?"

"Ew," Emily said, closing the cover of the book. "I am most definitely not going to marry Percy Weasley. And I won't have time for ten children anyway, since I'm going to be so busy with my career."

"What career is that going to be?" Calista queried, "Do we need to consult the book again?"

"No," Emily said, blushing slightly, but her back straightened almost defiantly. "I don't need to, I already know exactly what I'm going to do. I'm going to write and publish spellbooks. I'll have my own press, and I'll release my own books as well as the ones I find promising from other writers."

"Wouldn't you have to discover or invent some new spells, to write a whole series of books?"

"Yes," Emily said, as if replying to a challenge, "And I will." She looked at Calista expectantly, and Calista received the distinct impression that this moment, and how she reacted to Emily's declaration of her dreams, would define the rest of their friendship.

"Well," Calista said, "I want to research new spells too. Maybe your press could print a book of mine some day."

Emily's eyed widened, and then narrowed in suspicion. "Are you having me on?" she demanded, "Are you being sarcastic again?"

"No, I'm not," Calista said earnestly, "I really am interested in discovering new spells. I've been wondering if some spells that currently require a wand to perform could ever be adapted so that you could use them without one. If I ever figure it out, maybe I'll write a book on that." She broke off, and laughed derisively, "Ask Professor Flitwick if you don't believe me, I practically write a book for each of his homework assignments anyway."

Emily studied Calista, and then smiled shyly. "I'd print your book. If it were up to my professional standards, of course."

Just then, the door of the flat opened, and Ferada's head poked in. "I'm on my lunch break," she said breathlessly, not even bothering to step fully inside the room, "I have to be back in half an hour, but if you girls can be ready in less than a minute, you can come back to Diagon Alley with me for ice cream."

With impressive speed, both girls slipped into their shoes, and Calista dashed into Emily's bedroom to retrieve some money from the bag she'd brought with her. She'd had nothing to spend her small allowance on over the summer, so she'd brought what she'd managed to save with her, for just such an occasion as this.

As the girls met Emily's mother at the door, Ferada looked over Calista with a strange expression. "Don't you need to wash up a bit? Go on, I can wait another minute or two."

"What? No, I'm fine," Calista said, but Ferada pressed her lips into a tight line. "Go on, dear," she repeated gently but firmly, and Calista suddenly felt a strange hollowness in the pit of her stomach.

She rushed into the tiny washroom off the kitchen, and examined herself in the mirror. Her hair hung lank and decidedly greasy-looking, although her face was clean for the most part. She scowled at herself, but thought the expression only made her nose look even more prominent, and so she wiped her face of any expression.

She didn't much feel like going to Diagon Alley anymore, but she knew that refusing to go now would only draw more attention to the incident, and she already felt like she was about to die of embarrassment. Ferada must have noticed that while Emily dutifully bathed herself every day, Calista hadn't done so once since she'd arrived several days ago.

It wasn't that she'd deliberately decided not to, but she felt a little funny about bathing at someone else's house, and she'd never really had a routine about personal hygiene, anyway. At home and at school, she bathed whenever she felt dirty, which sometimes meant that she bathed every other day, and sometimes meant that she'd go for stretches of four or five days without.

Now, resisting the urge to scowl again at her reflection, Calista ran the tap and poured handfuls of water on her hair. Then she pushed her wet hair behind her ears, silently praying that Emily's mother wouldn't make another comment about it.

When she rejoined them at the door, Ferada only smiled. "Are we ready now, girls?" she said, and they left the flat. It didn't matter. The damage was already done, and Calista felt sullen and forlorn for the rest of the day.

They went to Florean Fortescue's as promised, although by the time they'd reached Diagon Alley, Ferada had to rush back to work. She made the girls promise to come to Flourish and Blotts' when they were finished, and then left them on their own. Emily ordered her favourite ice cream, but Calista declined, no longer in the mood for sweets.

"I can pay for your ice cream," Emily offered, and Calista felt her face burn, both with embarrassment and with the effort to school her expression.

"It's not that," Calista said forcefully, "I have money. I just… I don't feel very well, that's all."

"Are you sure?" Emily queried, and Calista was struck with the urge to slap Emily, although she didn't really know why.

"Yes, I'm sure. I don't feel well, alright? In fact… I think maybe I should go home tonight."

"Oh – really?" Emily asked anxiously, "It's just one more day. You don't think you can make it that long?"

"I don't know," Calista answered shortly, making a presentation of looking around at their surroundings, but Emily didn't catch the hint.

"We haven't finished our Gobstones tournament," Emily said anxiously, "And you're only one game behind. Anything could still happen."

"I haven't decided yet, okay? Just leave me alone." Calista snapped, not really caring that she was being rude.

"All right. Sorry. What do you want to do n—Oh, no."

"What?" Calista looked back at Emily.

"Portia MacNair is coming. She's seen us – great."

"I thought you and she were friends—"

"Shh, here she comes. Hello, Portia! How are you?"

Portia approached the pair just as Emily had predicted she would, and to Calista's surprise, she met them with a scowl.

"I thought you said your mum wasn't letting you have any company," Portia said to Emily, "How come  _she_ ' _s_  staying with you, then?"

Emily's face flushed, and Calista hid her surprise only through her training.

"She… she's not staying with me, Mum did say I couldn't have any company," Emily stammered, "She's just… we just… agreed to meet in Diagon Alley for the afternoon."

Portia redirected her glare to Calista, suspicion written all over her face. Calista spared a split-second glance at Emily, and caught the stricken look there. Emily's eyes were as easy to read as the lit sign above the ice cream parlour, and they begged Calista to play along.

"Is that a crime, Portia?" Calista challenged, pushing an edge of scorn into her words with very little effort. "Coming to Diagon Alley for the afternoon without sending out an announcement?"

Portia blinked, and looked behind her, as if she were expecting Olivia to suddenly appear at her shoulder and back her up. When it didn't transpire, she blinked again, and looked between Emily and Calista. "Well, no," she said, "I guess not. I'll, ah – see you at school, all right?"

When Portia left, Calista rounded on Emily, who was wearing an expression of mingled relief and dread.

"I thought you said you invited Portia and she couldn't come."

"I did say that," Emily stammered again, and bit her lip. "The thing is… Oh, Calista. I couldn't invite her or Olivia. You've seen where I live, it's… well, they'd never let me hear the end of it, if they knew what the outside of my house looked like, and where it is."

Calista absorbed this a moment. "But you invited me," she said quietly.

"Yeah, I did, and I'm not sorry. I was afraid to at first, but then Mum said she knew your dad, and – well, you never seemed as obnoxious as Olivia and Portia, and Mum was on my case about her never meeting any of my friends. I thought – I hoped that you'd understand. My mother works very hard to keep both of us in nice clothes, even though she says there's no shame in having to work hard for a living. No one at school knows where I live, except you – and you can't tell them, Calista, you simply can't."

Calista didn't really know where to begin. Finally, she settled on something. "I think I'm ready for ice cream now," she said, "And then we can meet your mum and go back to your flat for the next round of the tournament."

**o-o-o-o**

Later, in retrospect, Calista would think that she should have seen the nightmare coming. She had had a great week at Emily's, all things considered, had even won all three games of Gobstones they'd played that last day, effectively winning the tournament. She thought she'd finally really connected with someone her own age, maybe even had a real friend in Emily now. So, of course, on the final night of her stay at Emily's, she had woken up screaming.

The dream had started out in Calista's bedroom at home. She'd been trying to decide how to decorate her room, but every time she went to put something on top of her chest of drawers – the earrings from Olivia, her favourite book, her pewter cauldron – the item would disappear as soon as she had placed it.

In her dream, she had glanced up at her bedroom window, and seen Bellatrix's face outside of it. Her mother clawed at the glass, making a terrible, screechy scratching sound. She called out for her father, but when he entered the room, it was like he couldn't even see her. He stood in the room and looked around, looking right through Calista, and not seeming to notice Bellatrix fighting to get in through the window. Calista waved her arms and yelled, trying to get him to notice her to no avail, and when she looked down she found that she was almost invisible, and fading fast. She could see the floor of her room through her legs, could barely make our her hands when she moved them.

Then, the window shattered, and Bellatrix entered the room. Severus stood in the doorway, apparently unable to see either of them. Bellatrix smiled wickedly at her daughter. "I can see you," she said, and the words chilled what remained of Calista from head to toe. Bellatrix reached out a claw-like hand and grasped Calista's throat, which became suddenly solid underneath her fingers.

Calista screamed, but her father didn't appear to hear her. Bellatrix only laughed.

"Calista!" She was jolted awake by Emily shaking her arm. "Calista, what's happening?"

Calista closed her mouth, realizing belatedly that she had been screaming out loud. It took her a few seconds to fully comprehend where she was, and that she had been dreaming.

Ferada was suddenly in the doorway of the room too, her face creased with concern. Her eyes were a little foggy-looking, and she was in her nightclothes.

"Girls, what's going on? Calista, are you all right?"

Calista concentrated simply on not crying; why now, when she was in front of Emily and her mother, did she feel like bursting into tears? She hated crying, especially in front of anyone else; so why did she feel compelled to tears so often lately?

"I—I'm fine," Calista stammered, hating the way her voice wavered, "I just had a nightmare. I... I'm sorry I woke you up."

Ferada fussed for a few moments more, but eventually left the girls in peace. Calista rolled over in Emily's bed, facing the wall and silently begging Emily not to question her any further.

"Calista?" Emily ventured, and Calista stubbornly refused to answer, screwing her eyes shut tight and hoping Emily would think she had fallen asleep again already.

"What was your dream about?" she asked after a moment, and Calista still maintained her silence.

She heard a soft rustling, and then Emily was kneeling beside the bed, her voice so soft that Calista wasn't certain Emily even knew she was awake.

"I've had some nightmares, too. I don't think I've ever woken up screaming, but sometimes I wake up with tears on my face and I'm terrified someone will see them."

Calista opened her eyes, but didn't turn to face Emily yet.

"It doesn't happen very often," Emily continued, murmuring, "But often enough that I'm afraid it will happen when I'm at school, and Portia and Olivia will see. I... I've seen how they treat you. I don't want that to happen to me."

"So you just let them tease me," Calista finally responded softly, "Because you were afraid of how they'd treat you if you took my side. Even though you  _know_  what it's like."

"I never claimed to be brave," Emily said after a startled pause. Perhaps she really had assumed that Calista was asleep. "The Sorting Hat put me in Slytherin, didn't it? You should know as well as I do, us Slytherins aren't heroes. We just… we just try to survive, no matter what it takes or who it hurts."

"Survival," Calista murmured, "I don't remember hearing that one in the Sorting Hat's song."

"Don't judge me," Emily sighed, retreating to lie back down on her makeshift pallet of afghans, "You know as well as I do that once we get back to school, it's going to be the way it always was."

Calista waited until she heard the soft, deep breathing of sleep coming from Emily before she whispered her reply.

"Actually, I didn't know that."

She shut her eyes resolutely, ignoring the burning sting of unshed tears and went back to sleep.

**o-o-o-o**

Calista hadn't been expecting her father to meet her at the station when she got back home, but there he was. He looked almost comically out of place, amid the Muggles in business suits and street clothes, standing tall and pale with his longish dark hair and pitch-black travelling cloak, even in the heat of summer.

She'd probably never admit it out loud, but he was a welcome sight to her at that moment, even if she felt he was treating her like a little child, not trusting her to cover the short distance from the station to their home by herself. She rushed off the train, but composed herself several paces before she approached him, determined not to let him know that she actually wanted him there, after all her complaints a week ago.

Perhaps he knew anyway, though, because when she reached him, he leaned down slightly to take her travelling bag, and wrapped his other arm around her briefly in a partial embrace.

"How was your trip? I trust you enjoyed your visit with Emily?" he asked, just as Calista said, "How's Yellow? Did you remember to feed him?"

Father and daughter bit back what surely would have been identical half-smiles, and both looked up at each other with the most careful of expressions in place, neither of them aware of the stark similarities between them that everyone else in the station surely noticed.

"Your cat is regrettably still in perfect health," Severus muttered, "Although if you'd left me caged with it for much longer, I don't know that I'd offer the same guarantee."

"I don't know why you don't like him. He likes you. Anyway, I did have fun, but I'm glad to be home now."

"Missed your cat that much, did you?" The question was so offhand that Calista bit back yet another secret grin.

"That's part of it, but I missed someone else, too."

Severus smiled, and this time Calista caught it.

"I must admit," Severus said, leading his daughter away from the station, "I worried about you a lot more than I thought I would. I kept wanting to call Ferada on the fire to make sure you were okay, even though I knew you'd be cross with me. I'm glad she sent me an owl when you arrived, or I might have called anyway."

"I wouldn't have minded, really," Calista said, wearied into honesty after the strange week she'd had, "I mean, I would have put up a fuss of course, but it's actually kind of nice to know that you worry about me."

Severus glanced down at his daughter. He couldn't read much of anything in her face, which made him at once proud as well as sad. Her confession surprised him; while he struggled throughout their relationship to be offhand about his level of affection for her, and not to appear emotional or caring enough to drive her away, it had never really occurred to him that she might be doing the very same thing, that her affected distance might be a cover.

He felt a kick of fear in his stomach as he looked straight ahead, not daring to meet her gaze while he said what he said next. "Of course I worry about you," he said, perhaps louder than he intended to, but he wanted to make certain she couldn't miss his words, "I love you."

There was a dreadful silence that carried on for perhaps three or four paces, and then Calista reached for his free hand. "I love you too, Dad."

It was the first time he could remember her calling him that, instead of 'Father'. The word sounded unnatural, both in her forlorn voice and in the way it described him. That was all right, though. They would have years ahead of them to make the word work.


End file.
